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Dedicated to my beloved parents
(Ïåðåâîä êíèãè "ß ïîìíþ æèçíü. Êíèãà 1")
Dedicated to my beloved parents -
my father AlpeyevNikolay Arsentyevich
and my mother Alpeyeva Alexandra Alexandrovna…
A HUMANITARIAN, SCHOLAR AND PUBLIC FIGURE
Those books that describe and reveal the fortunes of a person's Motherland
in a talented and comprehensive way, books that generalize basic features
of human nature displayed both in hard fortunes of different generations,
as well as in highly demanding fates of the home countries, return to
people over and over again, each time as if they were a new book. This
happens because people while coming into contact with a truthful description
of life and unbending manifestations of human spirit feel as if there
is some remedy in the books, something in tune with their reflections,
their emotional experience and search for truth and meaning of life. In
my opinion the same concerns books by Alexander Nikolayevich Alpeyev as
they turn into an important component part of the spiritual heritage of
the country.
Alexander Alpeyev's childhood and youth were quite typical of his generation.
He was born into a common peasant working family, went to a village school,
and then worked as a teacher of physical training at Greben seven-year
school. He served in the Soviet army in the 181 Guard's rocket brigade
that was stationed on the territory of the former GDR.
Having served in the army for three years he entered Belarusian State
University, one of the leading USSR universities at the time. He deserved
authority and respect of both students who were in the same year and lecturers
through his serious attitude to both his studies and life in general.
First when a student and later as a post-graduate student and senior lecturer
every summer he went to Siberia, the Komi Republic, Karelia and Zapolyarye,
he participated in building the Baikal-Amur main road together with his
friends working in extremely hard conditions to earn his living.
After his graduating from university, A.N. Alpeyev's life was closely
connected with the main scientific and educational centre of Belarus.
This link was broken off only for a short time when he was an officer
at the State Security Committee of the Republic. After his post-graduate
studies A.N. Alpeyev defended his Candidate dissertation, and then several
years later he studied at the joint doctoral candidacy of International
Personnel Academy, the US Open University and International Academy for
personnel management. Then he defended a thesis for a doctor's degree
in political studies. A.N. Alpeyev worked at the Belarusian State University
for twenty years. Several generations of university students attended
his lectures on history.
In 1994, having overcome numerous obstacles, he established Humanitarian
and Economic Institute. Those who closely knew Alpeyev realized that the
main reason for stubborn opposition of Education Department officials
was profound concern about the state of affairs in the sphere of education.
Only his talent and strong will helped Alpeyev to overcome the obstacles.
Today more than six thousand students study at International Humanitarian
and Economic Institute. There work about 300 lecturers and senior lecturers.
All in all there are almost seven thousand people who work and study at
the Institute. The IHEI team is comprised of people holding the same views
and united by a common idea to give high quality education to youth and
to bring up true patriots of their country. Since the institute was established
about three thousand specialists graduated from it, among them lawyers,
economists, psychologists and historians. Almost five hundred of those
were from the so-called Chernobyl area, from poor families and sportsmen
who enjoyed free education or substantial advantages.
The names of sportsmen who used to be and are students of the Institute
are well-known far beyond the borders of Belarus. They are even difficult
to enumerate. Fifteen Honored Masters of Sports, over fifty masters of
international class, about a hundred masters of sports and first-grade
sportsmen studied before and study these days at IHEI. National teams
in particular kinds of sports are staffed with the students of IHEI mainly.
Alpeyev's students have conquered the highest sports summits and become
champions and prizewinners of the Olympics, World and European championships,
as well as winners of Belarusian championships. Like their teacher, they
are true patriots who bring fame to their home country Belarus by their
hard titanic work. A.N. Alpeyev's activity to establish, develop and strengthen
the institute was marked by International Gold Medal 'For success in educational
sphere.' He is an academician and Honorary Doctor of the International
Personnel Academy. As a commemoration of his achievements in promoting
psychology, the discipline so indispensable for the contemporary society,
A.N. Alpeyev was nominated an academician of International Personnel Academy
for psychological sciences (Russia). In January 2006 Alexander Alpeyev
was chosen an academician of Russian Academy for natural sciences. The
beginning of 2006 was marked by another important event as he became the
prizewinner of Oxford University International Prize (Great Britain) and
was awarded with the Socrates medal for distinguished achievements in
the sphere of intellectual development of the world community.
After the institute was established, the scholar became more interested
in social, political and economic problems. His scientific and research
work resulted in writing and publishing historic and publicist essays
such as "We are people … XX century', 'There was no tomorrow…', 'My
land is my destiny', 'The turning point of history', 'Reflection about
destinies of my Motherland.' A.N. Alpeyev's publications often appear
in periodicals. His numerous articles are sharp in their nature and are
followed by public repercussions.
One can envy his active and energetic nature. In the early 1990s he and
Gennady Karpenko, Viktor Gonchar, Leonid Sechko and his colleagues worked
at establishing the Party of National Accord. Gennady Karpenko was chairman
of the party at the time, while Alexander Alpeyev was chairman of its
executive committee. Today he is leader of the Belarusian Movement on
Protection of the Nation, of the Belarusian Centre for Christian culture
support, of the Belarusian Academy for social sciences. He still works
and writes a lot.
A.N. Alpeyev possesses an exceptionally subtle spiritual ear. He has a
brilliant publicist pen that enables him to describe historic reality
and Man in a truthful and expressive manner. He 'populated' our history
with people in a well-considered and emotional way. History is presented
as material to draw practical conclusions from. The historic analogies
Alpeyev draws in his books result inevitably in considering social and
economic problems. While comparing political processes going on in his
country to those in European countries he shows headlong progress of European
nations and notes bitterly the stern poor living conditions and grievous
lack of headway typical of his deeply loved in recent years. The bitterness
he displays when writing about the never-ending chain of frustrating tendencies
in our society and the aggressive mistrust of intelligentsia who have
despaired of happiness is typical of A.N. Alpeyev's personality who is
by nature a scholar aspiring to positive constructive action.
He notes that just like in 1937 of the past century, now in XXI century
our society faces some spiritual broken-heartedness. Both then and now
people's striving for better life, for progress, for civilization and
democracy is paid high price for. By the way, at the height of the 1930s
repressions of the past century Alpeyev's family also lost five strong,
handsome and hardworking men in the prime of their lives. They were his
maternal grandfather, two of his grandfather's brothers and two brothers
of his grandmother.
A.N. Alpeyev believes in God. He doesn't believe in having a morally healthy
society without any religion that has faith in divine authority as its
basis. In his creative work Alexander Alpeyev remains a poet. This poetic
basis produces perhaps one of the strongest impressions after one gets
acquainted with his books. By the way, A.N. Alpeyev has published three
poetical collections; more than a hundred songs are based on his verses.
There have been put out five song collections and five music disks as
well. Such famous composers as Vladimir Budnik, Edward Zaritsky, Olga
Meshkova-Shvets, Izmail Kaplanov and Andrei Khvisevich cooperate with
Alexander Alpeyev. A. Alpeyev's songs are song today by such popular Belarusian
singers as I. Afanasyeva, N. Boguslavskaya, M. Vasilevskaya, Vlada, T.
Voronova, L. Voitovich, L. Gribaleva, V. Gromov, A. Isayev, D. Kocherovskiy,
Y. Naumenko, V. Provalinskiy, G. Shishkova, A. Dluzskiy, V. Kalina and
the art group 'Belarusy'. Five creative readings of the poet Alexander
Alpeyev have been held in the best concert halls of Minsk.
The Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as the Polish President
Alexander Kvasnevsky and the President of Slovakia Ivan Gashparovich thanked
Alexander Alpeyev officially for his music disk 'We reached Berlin and
gained victory' devoted to the 60th anniversary of the Soviet people's
victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Books and people exist as long as they are perceived and opposed, loved
and hated. A.N. Alpeyev's reflection on the destinies of his Motherland
are heartfelt and bitter in their nature which is no wonder as he has
expressed ruthless acuteness and a range of contradictions of the present
day social when depicting the destinies.
One might reproach the author for lack of flaring optimism in his books.
Yet, an unbiased reader will easily notice that Alpeyev's pessimism quite
often turns into a call for active action. Let me remind you that in his
meditation A.N. Alpeyev seeks first of all to reveal the truth. The humanitarian
ideal of a free man enabled him to make a giant step towards scientific
interpretation of social relations.
A.N. Alpeyev is fully aware of the uncommon nature of his views and, as
a free man, he stands up for his views daily in an unbending manner. It
is typical of society to owe the external freedom of a whole generation
to the inner freedom of a particular person.
I dedicate the heartfelt verses to my friend, the person of like mind
whom I respect deeply…
CHAPTER I
WAVES OF MEMORY
…The boundless sea of the soul where each of us swims as long as the
Most High measures off. This wandering may be of different duration; it
might amount to an instant as if it were a flash of lightning or may last
all life long. The Lord wanted me to be swimming in the waves of my memory
for sixty years which makes me feel grateful to Him.
Like the sea, the memory is restricted to the shores whose bounds one
can never leave though one has a strong wish to see or, more exactly,
to recall in memory everything one has seen and experienced. Waves of
memory move on one after another, increasing each day, month and year.
Sometimes the sea of the soul faces a storm but the soul endures and splashes
out everything seen and suffered. Soon a person's soul feels better as
part of the burden has been shifted off to the hearts of those similar
to it. Then the latter swim with the burden in the waves of a person's
memory helping it by their experience and compassion.
Swimming in the sea of life is simultaneously a travel which is interesting,
sometimes joyous, though more frequently it is characterized by sorrow
and a bit of sadness. One feels the sadness for, as a famous poet said,
our planet is little fit for merriment. I do not dare to judge about the
whole planet but one might and should speak about one particular piece
of the universe… Though one sometimes doubts whether it is necessary and
whether somebody is going to feel any better. I might say I am not going
to. I do not think somebody will give a sigh of relief after having read
my narration. Anyway, I hope my thoughts put on paper will touch the human
soul. Now another question arises, 'Why touch the soul if it is hurt and
tired to the point of exhaustion…'
While creating the universe, our Lord took care of the most human in a
human being, i.e. of his soul. In the soul one might find the very best
features gifted by the Lord; they are love, kindness, tenderness, gentleness,
endearment and compassion… All the features are impossible to name but
they all were created for the human being, in the name of and for the
good of the human being.
For many years and centuries the soul turned to God who displayed holiness,
faith and love for everything around the human soul. The soul used to
live a happy life, to do good and to suffer a lot. This way of life existed
for centuries. What could have been better? People lived, worked, got
married and, what is most important, believed in God. Families used to
be big; in villages, as a rule, they consisted of 7-10 or even more people.
For example, the family of my grandfather who was executed by shooting
in the torture-chamber of the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs had
eleven children.
Many citizens of the state were believers. Once again I want to stress
the fact that this used to be a common feature since time immemorial.
Nothing seemed to be able to break this holy tradition. The postulates
of faith occupied deeply everyone's soul and consciousness. No one was
allowed to start or finish a meal without a prayer. The same held good
for starting work in the field, in the forest and in the meadow. Here,
there and everywhere, high and low man called to God for help and God
helped him. Many troubles and diseases stepped back and, what is most
important, the society used to be spiritually healthy, united and solid.
Undoubtedly, the basis for this was faith.
Everyone in the family, young and old, took care of each other, prayed
for everyone's health, wished good to relatives, neighbors, the Tsar and
the Motherland. From the present day position the state of affairs is
even difficult to believe… The soul used to be healthy while its priority
over the body and the physical state was unquestionable.
I would like to be understood properly with respect to the above said.
There is nothing ideal both in nature and in society. I do not idealize
the state of pre-revolutionary society, either. But it is a well-known
fact that things are cognized when compared. It is clear to every person,
even an inexperienced one, that spiritual and moral state of the Russian
and Belarusian society at the time could not be compared with the present
day one.
Suddenly there was a bolt from the blue in the home history … Yet, the
empire got into worse scrapes. Nothing could compare with the Tatar and
Mongol yoke when Russian people were tortured both physically and spiritually
for over three centuries or with the thirty-year war started in 1654 after
Ukraine was annexed to Russia. Then the so-called voluntary annexation
of the Great Duchy of Lithuania came into turn. Still, the true devil
cropped up in October 1917. No one could foresee the consequences it implied.
The most terrible one was destruction of the orthodox soul, Christian
faith and finally of humane features in a human being.
After the revolution won, Bolsheviks started a crusade against faith and
God which lasted for more than seven decades. The number of lives ruined
and the amount of blood shed is unbelievable! The antichrist committed
his deeds in a big, wicked and merciless way. People say the executors
of the devilish experiment lacked God in their souls. This held good of
both V. Ulyanov and his comrades-in-arms. Strictly speaking, one might
say about domination of these nothingarians and thus about the misfortunes
they caused… In fact I shudder to see former leaders of the communist
party and their nearest satraps who have blood on their hands visiting
temples and churches today. Shoulder to shoulder with high church officials,
with no jot of faith in God, they address believers and display splendor
in a hypocritical way. I consider this to be worse than blasphemy. People
who had their souls anathematized long ago suddenly became believers.
They were taught to cross themselves although their souls remained foul,
mercenary and antihuman. God, I wonder who is going to stop the madness
and whether it is ever to be stopped.
I am sure the people are not to blame for this bacchanalia. Cold-hearted
officials run the show these days. The higher the rank occupied by this
or that official is, the more evil and violence over a common man he administers…
One may give plenty of examples when a common man can arrive at the truth
nowhere; he is made to go from one office to another. Just like at the
time of the communist regime, the offices are occupied by officials who
commit violence over a man and his soul. In its turn, the blood-stained
and wounded human soul constantly appeals to God and calls for God's mercy
and help.
I often get news from my fellow-villagers and from different regions of
Belarus on the way the powers that be mock at people. Any person occupying
even the most senior position of a team-leader, a foreman or a farm manager
seems to be given a free hand to mock at a common man. A human being is
considered to be dirt. There is no one and nowhere to complain. That is
why the soul appeals to God…
XX century is the most dreadful one in destinies of many nations, especially
of those that underwent physical annihilation and spiritual violence.
Belarusian people are second to none in this respect. The war years' death
toll was very heavy. More than 2.5 million of our fellow-countrymen were
killed during the war. Spiritual violence and destruction of human souls
that started in 1917 is still in progress. One may ask what sort of citizens
the state is going to have as a result. The answer will be flat: those
who are spiritually deprived, with most brut instincts, who violate God's
laws. Instead of following the commandment 'do not kill' they kill, rob
and rape, instead of 'do not steal' they steal. When they have no possibility
they steal on a small scale, those who can steal on a large scale. We
cannot say that everyone steals but in fact there are quite many of those
who do so and the amount stolen strikes one's imagination. As far as 'love
your neighbor' is concerned here things are quite opposite as people have
come to hate each other.
Why do we live a life like this when we struggle for survival every day?
The whole nation has become a great sinner which is dreadful… Does the
people like this have any future? The answer is also flat and definite
- of course it does not. There is only one way out to escape the state
of affairs, namely to return to faith and to God…
My home country Belarus is perceived as a small islet on a huge world
map. Since olden days there have lived peaceful and hardworking people
who never threatened anyone and never dreamed to conquer other nations.
It was historically established that our people participated in all European
bloody battles. They almost always sided with some country or another
and died defending somebody's interests. Thus one cannot consider Belarusian
history outside the context of European and world history. Here it is
appropriate to speak about diverse, inter-conditional and multi-dimensional
nature of the historic process.
The book 'I Remember Life' is devoted to considering the most significant
problems of country's development in the XX century. These problems are
higher-priority; they had an immediate impact on Belarusian nation. Among
them, in the first instance, are the problems of determining political
and economic preferences. If they had made a correct choice, our living
standards today, our material life in the first place, would be entirely
different and we would not drag out such a miserable existence. In this
respect it is necessary to receive an answer to the question who exactly
worked out the concept of political and economic development of the state,
who set tasks, who put them into practice and who exactly is to blame
for the complete failure of the policy? Once again I want to emphasize
that it is exactly the correct choice and strategy defining that the future
of our nation, its happiness or unhappiness depend on. In the meanwhile
our nation remains unfortunate and miserable, with no definite future.
Who is going to take responsibility for this?
The turning point of the historic process which impacted whole nations
gives plentiful food for research, as a lot of new phenomena came into
existence in states, namely, in some countries there began the process
of public life democratization, state monopoly in all spheres of social
life has disappeared, economic reforms are carried out and there is a
process of shaping the market and market relations going on. Here it is
impossible to underestimate the role of society's political elites and
of particular leaders. It is right here that we face a serious problem.
It turns out that our country has no political elite in its true sense.
There are also no strong leaders able to generate ideas that, in their
turn, might influence social development positively. This circumstance
may be qualified only as misfortune or even tragedy of our nation. It
is here that all our misfortunes come from. A lot depends on how soon
we will be able to have strong elite in politics, economy, and culture
and so on. In the meanwhile we should not be under the delusion, as this
elite has not made itself known so far.
Thus, conclusions suggest themselves. We are wasting valuable historic
time and historic prospects.
Another important circumstance should be pointed out, namely that we should
learn lessons from history, even the most bitter ones. History should
teach everyone, both young and old, otherwise we may turn into people
without kith or kin, those who do not know do not love and do not value
their history and then we will be unlikely to be called a nation.
Belarus is rich in talented, clever, honest and decent people who might
and should help their country to find a way out of the impasse. Only intelligence
and supreme self-discipline will save our nation.
Global civilization history provides a wealth of information about the
emergence, formation and development of practically all states and nations.
Undoubtedly, we did not set the task to trace evolution of almost all
countries and to choose something acceptable to us on its basis in order
to become the strongest and richest by repeating the experience of the
most advanced, first of all in economic respect, countries. It is clear
the idea is vain. Nevertheless, in our opinion, side by side with national
features of this or that country there are also common development regularities
typical of practically all states. I think in our case it will be wise
to follow the example of highly developed European countries.
It seems European priority is supreme organization of society in general,
the key feature being government mechanism with patriotic intellectuals
playing main roles. They are professionals, flexible diplomats, experienced
and reliable economic executives, etc. If we take into account such important
factor as supreme culture in all spheres of social life, then we may get
the answer why we have living standards differing from those of the Germans,
the French and the Dutch… We should not also fail to take into account
the personality of a nation's leader.
As a result an interesting detail arises, i.e. we have common territory
(Europe) and complexion but are completely different in other respects.
There is a marked difference in living standards which is undoubtedly
a defining feature of everything. What should our nation do in order to
enjoy the fruits of European civilization at least a little? The first
man of the millennium Karl Marx, even a hundred men like him will give
no definite answer.
Where is the way out, then? Still, there should be one but the question
is how to find it. It is undoubtedly looked for by many people; among
them are politicians, scholars, public figures and high officials from
the higher echelons of power. There have been suggested many variants,
alas nothing works. There is also an acute question of the nation's future
and of whether the people is going to have any tomorrow.
I think we should decide in favor of suggestions of primary importance
among the numerous ones we have. In our opinion the suggestion of the
kind should be consolidation of the whole society. We used to face worse
times, e.g. the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 when the then leaders,
or a leader, managed to inspire the nation of almost 200 million. The
great Frenchman General de Gaul managed to raise France from its knees,
too, and to make it a great power once again.
So why our present-day leaders are unable to do something similar, what
prevents them or what they lack? Let's underscore the importance of consolidation
of the nation for it to be a single body with the unity of tasks and aims.
This should be done at any price, though who is going to do this remains
a serious question. Anyway, discord within society should be put an end
to. Here the idea of saving the whole nation should be a fundamental one.
The idea should be the basis for building ideology. One should not philosophize
in search of the national idea as the search has been delayed for too
long. We have already lost for good the strategic time factor. To make
up for the lost factor will be impossible. The nation should be united
around some national leader, which is going to be a guarantee of the way
out of the tragic situation.
Another basic factor is the choice of strategic partners or a partner.
History chose for us long ago. There is no doubt that such strategic partner
for Belarus is Russia. To think the other way round means not to know
the ABC of life. Thus, we should send hopes upon the Lord to make Russia
our partner.
Today Russia is a body recovering quickly due to reforms in all spheres
of life, especially in economic one. The country is recovering from crisis.
It faces individual minor problems that do not affect the general positive
picture. If we take into account that the country and the nation have
their leader whose characteristic features are deep and extraordinary
thinking, consideration and consistency in his actions and deeds, self-control,
if you want, then one might speak with certainty about this country's
good prospects for the future.
I respect Ukraine and its diligent people. I think one of these days we
will be living a single family, sharing both joy and sorrow.
I am also sure that western countries are far from being our enemies.
Let's take the huge humanitarian aid rendered by them to our republic
as an example. Tens of thousands of Belarusian kids have been to Germany,
Italy, Spain and Holland to improve their health. I think we need no other
proof of their attitude to us. I thank all those people who did not leave
us on our own to fight the consequences of the terrible Chernobyl disaster…
Right now it is necessary to us to start active reforms in the most significant
spheres of social life, especially in economic one. Otherwise we will
do nothing to the nation whose patience is far from being infinite. Is
anyone going to object to considered and consistent actions aimed to improve
the situation?
We should not be afraid of promoting private initiative and private property
which played and still play a primary role all over the world and which
mould a new type of relations and a new type of a human being … The thoughts
give me no rest year after a year. More and more often I ponder over the
question of what kind of the past we have lost and what expects us in
the future?..
…I am sixty now… One may meditate on whether it is little or much. There
are many opinions on that score, as they say, many men many minds. But
it might be not how much you have lived that is important but what you
have done during these years and your life. How many things have been
survived, good and bad, how many joys and sorrows there have been - everything…
I remember myself since the distant February of 1950 when my grandmother
died. I was less than four at the time. Scientists insist that human memory
may fix its attention on up to three per cent of information at the age.
Thus, separate details and fragments of that mournful February day remained
in my memory. I remember it was thawing, nevertheless, my grandmother
started on her last journey in a sledge with two horses harnessed. I remember
myself sitting near the coffin. The grandmother left a deep trace in my
memory due to my mother's stories. She used to tell me about how much
my granny loved me, about how many songs she sang sitting at my cradle
and how she addressed me, a kid, with a request to plant a fir-tree on
her grave so that a nightingale could sit on a branch singing its songs
there. She requested me to do so as she had pains in her liver and I guess
she might have some presentiment about her decease.
There is another tree growing on my grandmother's grave. I put up a simple
monument there. The only thing I do not know is whether a nightingale
flies and sings its songs there…
I saw and remember the life of the post-war poverty-stricken village.
Almost all peasants used to work themselves to the bone day and night.
Nevertheless, they lived a very poor life. They used to wear their scanty
dud patched all over for years as they were unable to buy something new.
There were the same problems with footwear. At the time some people still
wore bast shoes, our neighbor old man Matei in particular. I remember
him always wearing bast shoes. I do not know about good and bad points
of the footwear, but I tried to show off the moccasins myself when our
neighbor made bast shoes to me and my brother. Nevertheless, it by no
means did any good when you put on this Belarusian marvel footwear in
time of autumn slush or winter frost 30 degrees below zero. Unfortunately,
the only alternative was to go barefoot…
And what I think now is that Man does not always sound proud, it sounds
bitter not infrequently… These hardships of their early life engraved
on the memory and affected the whole life of those children who were born
in the 2nd half of 1940s. There were not many children in the village
at the time as most men were killed during the war at the front or as
partisans; moreover even more of them, i.e. eighty men, were subject to
repression in 1930s. More children were born during the early 1950s. In
the 2nd half of 1970s 492 people lived in my native village Rudna while
now there are only several tens of natives still living there. Many people
crossed the Great Divide before their time… If our living standards were
similar to those in European countries many tens of old men would still
be alive in my native village.
My heart is wrung with pain when I come to my home village and do not
see the former animation and movement in the streets, as well as old people
at their izbas. Before, every side-street in the village had a herd of
cows, while now there are about 20 of them in the whole village. The village
is silent and desolated…
Though at the very least, the post-war village was living and reviving.
The kids were also its living organism who lived a life of their own.
Our life frequently reminded very little the one kids usually live. At
home we had to do work to help our fathers and mothers, while in the kolkhoz
or sovkhoz we did the hard work of grown-ups, sometimes even risking our
lives. Yet, we saw nothing different and we had nothing to compare with.
It was only when some former villagers came with their offspring from
towns on holiday that we felt them to be different from us. Perhaps, they
were more educated and more civilized. Surely, we envied them as we were
evidently country bumpkins, rough and ignorant as compared to them. Nevertheless,
we did not expect ourselves to remain like this forever and we were sure
to reach their level.
I think we possessed our own advantages over children from towns. We were
taught to overcome hardships and to work since early childhood. This must
have been a predominant circumstance which played an important part both
in my own life and in the life of many villagers by origin as we were
more pure from the moral point of view. We saw hard experience of our
elders - our grandfathers, grandmothers, mothers and fathers. We had respect
for them inside us, in our hearts; it was not something we did under the
lash. I envied much those of my contemporaries who had their grandmothers
and grandfathers. My own grandmother and grandfather on my mother's side
of the family were dead, while those on my father' side were far away,
in Russia. Sometimes I used to say to my mum, 'Misha or Vasya have their
grandmother and grandfather, but I have none.' I wished so much I had…
All in all, life in the village ran its course. It faced global shocking
events in full measure, i.e. the so called revolution or coup of 1917,
which resulted in the change of patriarchal way of life in the late 1920s
and the early 1930s, the terrible collectivization that did away with
the rural toiler and, naturally, with the economic basis of the state,
i.e. with private property. Peasantry was assaulted with violence. Suffice
it to mention that in my native village 42 people, all of them were men,
were subject to repression in 1930s. My family on the grandmother's and
grandfather's side may be treated as victims with good reason as 5 men
were repressed.
The war of 1941 rendered the village completely lifeless. Those men who
survived the 1930s were killed during the terrible period. Only cripples
came back from war - blind, with their legs or arms lost. There were no
healthy men at all. Women, as well as teenagers and children, had to endure
almost everything. I remember them plough, mow, sow and gather the harvest.
Strange as it may sound, as the post-war kids we played the war. All children
wanted to be our lot, i.e. the Russian. No one wanted to play the role
of fascists or politsais, so much they were hated. Undoubtedly, we knew
that our lot would gain a victory while the Germans would be defended.
No one wanted to be beaten. Now I consider the games to be a powerful
factor of patriotic self-education. One is just filled with wonder at
how we learnt nuts and bolts of 'military strategy and tactics.' We dug
ordinary trenches and communication trenches; we discussed plans of offensive
and defensive operations. In a word we behaved as is we were at war. We
pictured all this listening to our parents and to those who came back
from war and we repeated everything in our children's games. We tried
to make friends with former front-line soldiers and partisans and hated
those who compromised themselves during the war.
I wonder if we knew that it was already at that time that our self-education
of all types, i.e. work, patriotic and those of our parents, - was of
complex nature. It was only after several decades that pundits would start
speaking exactly about complex upbringing in their theoretical works though
we put this type of upbringing into practice much earlier. This is the
case when theory was outrun by practice, with quite decent, even good
results…
Since early childhood, as early as I can remember, I observed not only
my parents but the whole of the village work in a hard and backbreaking
manner. Children used to work side by side with grown-ups. My first habits
of work were connected exactly with a cow. From sheer force of my age
I could not be a herdsman, only a herdsboy. I dislike grazing cows since
childhood though I had to be a herdsboy since I was seven. Cows are animals
indispensable for any household. No wonder people used to call cows bread-winners
who fed children in the first turn. Yet, it is necessary to put a lot
of efforts to get milk. One should mow grass, dry it, feed and graze the
cow as well as to clear up the mess made by it. Peasants loved the cow
and took care of it. No wonder it is considered a sacred animal in India.
If a cow died for some reason that was a real tragedy for the family.
One should not forget also about another animal playing an important role
in rural life, i.e. the horse. This handsome and clever animal fully shares
with its owner the burden of hard and backbreaking peasant labor. Whether
there is intense heat or winter cold, this animal is the main help to
the peasant, while from early spring till late autumn its existence may
at all be called utterly gloomy, like that of its owner. In summer each
of us was put in charge of a certain horse. The animal got used to its
master; they were both chained to the same oar as if they were barge haulers
on the Volga. So many hectares of land were ploughed, earthed up and harrowed
together, so many loads like wood, hey, and grain, potatoes and milk were
carried. It was a rare occasion that a horse displayed its restiveness.
I happened to be kicked by a horse due to my own carelessness. The pain
was terrible; there was a ringing in my head. Nevertheless, neither I
nor other children from the village harbored a grudge against these handsome
and hardworking animals. On the contrary, we liked them, fed them up,
spared them and never loaded much…
For some time past, when coming to the village, I often observe a group
of small and thin kolkhoz horses that one may call stray. I ask the village
inhabitants whether the horses have no owner and are left to themselves.
They say nobody really looks after them. There was a caring and heartfelt
man who did so but he died, so the horses were left without any care and
neglected. As for the cow and the horse that could be called a real toiler,
as well as for the rural izba, I would put up a monument to them in due
course as they deserve it…
I will not debate the thesis that labor dignifies a man. I am sure peasant
labor has resulted in the opposite. When work brings joy, one wishes to
work day and night. Strictly speaking, this is what I do; I mean I find
rest only when I work… But there is also another kind of work, the one
I came across in my early childhood. The work on the individual farm,
though it was hard, brought joy and pleasure. For example, when we gathered
good harvest of potatoes, apples and cucumbers and gathered hey for the
cow, then we felt joy at heart.
As far as public production is concerned, things are quite the opposite.
What joy can labor bring when they draw a sledge in the register (the
so-called work-day) or when you break your back in the field all day long
and get as little as 30 or 50 kopecks as a result? The same picture is
true not only of the past but of present day, as well.
I remember having come across the same injustice when I was 14. Once,
a man who called himself an expert at building concrete constructions
on the ponds of the fish farm near our village Rudna, came to the village.
He offered our children a job promising to pay good money. We worked to
the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with the grownups. The work
was very hard. All summer long, from early morning till late at night,
we pulled concrete mortar and dreamt of big earnings. From time to time
the construction project was visited by the dashing drunk expert whose
name - Pekun - I still remember. He kept up our spirits with drunken cries
and promised good earnings. We worked extending ourselves both physically
and mentally. It is exactly this superhuman labor that undoubtedly had
an adverse effect on our psyche. The master who turned out to be a real
thief swindled us by paying only 12 rubles for the three summer months.
Naturally, we were unable to defend ourselves. Neither were our parents…
And how many of such masters could be found all over the country. When
a student I myself came across this more than once while working on construction
jobs and throws in the Turukhan area, Komi Republic, Zapolyarye and Karelia
during my summer holidays… I may say I ruined my health; I 'killed' myself
to survive as there was no other alternative. I could not afford to spend
the whole summer having a rest, like many of the students in my year did.
I went off in search of a living nine times. These nine times may be said
to be nine exiles, nine ordeals of slave, backbreaking and forced labor
when you have to do the hardest work at the so-called 'communist building
sites for many months.
I recollect quite many incidents and events connected with the activity
whose dominant feature was hard backbreaking work, often work at the risk
of one's life. Once in Komi we suffered a lot from swarms of midges. In
the daytime it was up to 37 degrees above zero, while at night it was
impossible to rest as we were literally attacked by gnats and midges.
Many of us had their nerve go to pieces, guys intended to go home… I did
not condemn anyone as I understood they were right in their own way. At
the same time to leave meant to deprive ourselves of bread and butter
for a whole year. One of these horrible nights I ventured on the following.
I got stripped to the swimming trunks and lay face downwards on the ground.
Hordes of insects swarmed my naked body all over, they stung me pitilessly
and drank my blood while I was saying calmly that I felt no pain at all,
insects are not bad, on the contrary, they purify our blood. Since that
day all guys kept silent, there was no more panic and whining. We earned
a lot of money that summer. Everyone came back home with a feeling of
confidence in the future.
To sum up, I would like to say that though the labor was hard it affected
me positively. The ordeals hardened me in all respects and did a lot of
good to my future. In the long run, I should feel grateful to the Lord
for exactly this life and the ordeals…
CHAPTER II
I LOVE AND REMEMBER
I have lived in the world for sixty years and I love it the love I cannot
explain to myself… I am interested in everyone, whether it a factory worker
or a peasant herdsman Trophym. I ask if they bring bread to the village
shop and at what price and, what is more important, I ask how my dear
village inhabitants live. My old mother was not surprised why every time
I came to visit her I questioned her not only about village news but also
about neighbors, relatives and strangers, about every family from my native
village Rudna. Everything I see, hear and, of course worry about, cannot
but cause the want to describe it in order to bring the memory of history
and present-day reality to my descendants. The passionate want is getting
more acute year after a year. I do not know to what extent I will manage
to do so, but I want to give my view very much. I might feel better… I
might…
Different things often stir up my memory. Life is unpredictable. I remember
everything as if it had taken place yesterday. I do not note anything
down; I just think, I reason and remember. I wish to share everything
that aches and is brewing. The main thing is to remember forever that
we are people and God's creatures who the Lord granted their lives to
live, to love and to work on this holy and long-suffering land whose name
is Belarus…
I am thinking about my birthplace, the Polesye village Rudna which escaped
no event from the history of Mother Russia and Belaya Russ. I am thinking
about my nearest and dearest, about my fellow-villagers, and my heart
is bleeding frequently.
Unfortunately, many of those who could tell about the life of the village
both in remote and in not very distant past are dead. Life is very short;
but how many people who could still live died before their time! There
are a lot of simple monuments and ordinary crosses at the village grave-yard
in Rudna where many of my ancestors lie, and their number is becoming
more year after a year.
I made a habit of visiting the graves of my relatives every time I come
to my home village. Those who rest in them will not tell anything; one
can trace their fate to a certain extent only by the dates of their lives.
Some lived a long life but they were not many; some were finished by the
war; others were brought into non-existence by Stalin's torturers. Soviet
statistics assured that in pre-revolutionary Russia life expectancy for
men amounted to 32 years while during the socialist period it increased
twice or more. I wonder if the statistics took into account thousands
and millions of the twenty-year-olds who died at the fronts and in guerilla
detachments, as well as thirty-year-olds who were tortured to death in
the torture-chambers of the People's Commissariat of Home Affairs. I think
if we take into account the age of these Soviet power hostages as well,
the figure will turn out to be lower than before 1917.
It is known that the one who has better life standards lives a longer
life. This mirthless joke got spread in recent years - they say Belarusian
people will live a poor life but they will not live and thus suffer long.
Of course the joke has a grain of bitter truth in it, as the average population
in Belarus is supposed to decrease and amount to only 3.5 million people
by the middle of the XXI century, while now our country's population is
almost 10 million. That sounds frightful; this is our nation's tragedy
aggravated by deplorable state of our economy, by disastrous conditions
of all spheres of life, by the devastating ecological situation and by
calamitous consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe…
I am not willing much, but still let's return to the village graveyard
once again. Kinds of family crypts with different generations - whole
families, close and distant relatives- lying side by side were a common
occurrence in recent past. Those people lived in the same village; they
often helped and supported each other in a neighborly way. Now there are
very few natives left in the village. The village is disconnected, and
ties of blood are lost in most cases. Lonely old women live in cold spacious
izbas built to house a big family, and think sadly that when their time
comes there may be nobody to bury them at the graveyard… There are only
a few able-bodied people in the village; men, most of whom have ruined
themselves with drink, see neither any way out nor any gleam of hope,
there is no joy but for vodka in their lives; they are worn out by hard
work and by endless troubles. Where is the way out then? Who is going
to give an answer on how to breathe new life into the village and to revive
faith?..
I am proud of being born in a common peasant izba which was the start
of my life. Here were the origins of my love for my wonderful country
Belarus and for its people. All things are dear to me in this land, whether
it is a butterfly, a cricket, a stream or a pine forest. A plain and kind
Belarusian… Graves of my forefathers… This is my Motherland!
More than forty years have passed since I left my dear home. However,
wherever I was - either in the distant North or in the Turukhan area,
in Komi, in Zapolyarye, in various highly developed countries, in fashionable
luxury suites - nothing could substitute for a common peasant izba from
where my path into big life began. No city flat can be compared with a
small house buried in verdure every spring. The house is hidden from strangers
by lilac bushes. Yet, on mornings firewood is burning in the stove, and
one can easily guess the house is inhabited by whirling smoke out of the
chimney.
Burning fire is a sign of eternity. This held good for centuries and,
hopefully, will always be, though in my heart I feel a huge anxiety about
this izba, all other peasant huts, as well as about those who kindle and
keep up the fire. I wonder whether the huts and people living in them
are going to have any tomorrow.
Unfortunately, present-day life puts me on my guard and causes anxiety
about the future of the village. Is it going to have any tomorrow? This
is far from being pessimism; it is sheer reality of our life. So it seems
to me we should put up a monument to the peasant izba in the most prominent
place as the hut is dear to both me and many of my fellow-countrymen.
It is the birthplace of the majority of the country's citizens, both village
and city inhabitants, so they should remember their origins…
One should also bow to the wooden plough, the scythe, the rake and the
sickle. Notice the love and care a zealous man treats this simple but
extremely indispensable in every peasant's life instrument with. He will
never lend exactly this, his best and favorite, instrument to anyone.
He has got the hang of it, has polished it so it glitters and has many
blood corns on his palms that have grown black after so much work. In
the evening he carefully puts the instrument in the place allotted to
it once and for all, to take it again tomorrow and start a new work day
which is intense and hard. For many centuries man would have been helpless
without these main instruments that helped in everyday struggle for life,
and now, whatever technically equipped agriculture is, he is unable to
do without them. I am grateful to both the wooden plough and the scythe…
These simple instruments should be placed at the monument to the peasant
izba so that kindergarten children, pupils and university students could
be taken there to get an idea about the life of common bread-winners.
… Shine the name of the village and be grateful to it their sons and daughters.
The fate of the village is in the hands of God.
CHAPTER III
THE SONG OF MY NATIVE LAND
My native land, I compassionate towards you. You are beloved, dear and
holy… You have never been a stepmother to your children. You are a mother
and a bread-winner. So much has been written about you, so many songs
were sung and so many lives were given for you! Nevertheless, we are eternally
indebted to you. You always gave us strength when we had none left, you
loved us although you had to hate, and you forgave although it was impossible
to forgive. Your wisdom is beyond compare.
And I wonder what we, your children, have done for you to live?..
I wonder if all of us understand what you mean to us. Do we understand
that we inflict pain to you and force you, thus leaving bleeding wounds
that fail to heal on your body? Due to many reasons most of your children
fail to feel you, to pity, to protect and to adore you. I beg your pardon
for them; I confess to my filial love and wish to assure you of my loyalty
and devotion…
During your long life people have wounded you a lot, the wounds being
both minor and serious; nevertheless, you treated them in a divine way,
as if saying they were foolish and did not know what they were doing.
People commit outrages being unaware they will be rewarded according to
their deeds. Nothing in the world takes place without leaving a trace;
the Lord sees everything…
It turned out that contrary to God's will people are the greatest sinners
on Earth. They cripple the fates of their kind; yet, their biggest sin
is that they destroy life on the Earth and the Earth itself. The sin cannot
be atoned for. The Lord is not going to forgive us. I should say it is
not only me who feels the pain of my native land, but the land itself,
being sorrow and anxious for its fate, calls to people to ponder over
the common fate of both itself and of the human beings…
The inhabitants of the Earth are barbarians, as they have ruined a lot
of the beautiful things gifted to us by God, primarily the land. In fact
the nature of my beloved native land Polesye, which was of rare beauty,
has been wiped out, ranging from most beautiful oak-groves, pine forests
to their inhabitants. I still recollect ants, eternal toilers that are
being obliterated. Forests cut down, the ecological situation is worsening,
the climate of Belarus is changing for the worse, and thus it is a rare
occasion to see an ant-hill that was a common thing before.
I used to spend hours sitting at an ant-hill that reminded of a fortified
castle, and watching indefatigable work of the united ant kingdom. Everything
there astonished and surprised me. I projected their work on the one of
human beings and came to the conclusion that we could not and would not
be able to work like this. There the whole ant body worked in a tireless
and intensive way; no one shirked their work, while in human society there
are a lot of drones who aim at profiting by their neighbor's work. Speaking
figuratively, the majority struggle to keep their heads above water while
an insignificant small group has assumed the right to be in clover and
make use of somebody else's work. Thus, one should not look for examples
of some just social order in the West or even somewhere on the Moon. One
should just look more closely at an ant-hill and to find the answer there.
This should be done as quickly as possible, for very soon nothing alive
will be left due to the 'civilized' human activity.
The so-called zealous people did the same to the mighty oaks of my native
Polesye, having obliterated almost all of them so that now the French,
the Germans and the Dutch walk on the Polesye oak axed to make parquet
floor … One feels pity and pain to see it.
Wherever I came I observed the same picture - the coarse life of the dying
nation, the nation that is unlikely to have any future at the beginning
of the third millennium. I would not like to clothe myself in the mantle
of a prophet but I am afraid we are not going to have any future. Many
things testify to this prediction. In view of the long-lasting negative
processes in all spheres of social life without exception we were thrown
off several decades back into the past. The most depressing fact is that
our nation is dying out, as mortality exceeds birth rate. Land without
people is an orphan…
I look at my home land and my heart aches, as we have taken so much from
it and given so little in return. We took only for many centuries, but
what did we give in exchange? Now we have what we have, i.e. more that
20 per cent of our home land was poisoned by scientific and technical
progress and the Chernobyl disaster as its consequence, apparently the
same amount was destroyed by another achievement of the progress which
is land-reclamation and by its consequences; other 'expenses' take another
more than10 per cent. Altogether, we have half of our land destroyed…
Now even the blind sense the tragedy of the land. The one with keen ear
is not going to hear birds singing loudly, like they used to sing before.
Fewer frogs can be heard croaking in spring, the areas under arable land,
meadows and hayfields, under coniferous woods, oak and birch groves are
decreasing steadily…
Why has this happened? Who is to blame that the voracious human Moloch
absorbs and destroys everything around? When is the gift granted to the
human being by God (what I mean here is reason) going to prevail and stop
our home land dying?
Thus, once again the question arises - why are things so bad in our country
and so good there, in the West? By 'good things' we mean attitude of citizens
in western countries to their land, first of all. I saw this attitude
for myself. It was already when I served in the army in East Germany that
I was astonished by the German orderly attitude to their land, naturally,
as compared to our mismanagement and lack of discipline. Things were polar
opposites in Germany; in the first instance, it concerned the organization
of business, complex agricultural management and, undoubtedly, the culture
of farming. All this allowed the Germans to gather incredible, as compared
to ours, yield already in the distant 1960s of the past century. The crop
yield amounted to 50-60 centners per hectare while the potato yield was
360-400 centners per hectare. It is no use to make comments here, especially
if we take into account that this was true of the socialist GDR, not of
the Federal Republic of Germany. So why didn't we draw on the experience
of the Germans? All the more, it was considered at the time that we were
already perfecting developed socialism, while the Germans were only beginning
to build it. This was the way the Soviet propaganda machine was working.
As they say, it would sound funny if it wasn't so sad…
Other European nations do not fall behind the Germans, either. For example,
several years ago I happened to be to Sweden, the country governed by
Social Democrats and admired by almost the whole of the world. In the
last years of the USSR existence the Soviet propaganda machine stated
that it is exactly in Sweden that socialism according to K. Marx was built.
I think that first and foremost it is built according to the Swedish way.
The question is who prevented the USSR from building socialism according
to the same classic?
In Sweden everyone was startled first of all by the state of their soil
which was simply ideal; this was something like a striking and impressive
fairy story. It is almost impossible to believe that their crop capacity,
for example, amounts to 100 centners per hectare. Moreover, one should
take into account the Swedish north factor. Yet, we excuse our impotence
in the sphere of agriculture management by being in the zone of critical
farming, by changeable weather and by low temperature. Practically no
European country is carrying out crop battles but we do and win with the
fantastic result of 23 or 25, or sometimes even less than 20 centners
of crop yield on the average. Our crop yield amounts to 30 centners in
the most favorable years only. We go on struggling and suffering serious
material and technical losses …
I have been narrating about Europe. Now I'd like to say a few words about
Eastern countries, about China, for example. This country' problems of
how to feed the 1.5 billion population have long been known to everyone.
The Chinese grow their agricultural crops everywhere - in the mountains
and marshes, in the sands and on stone, even on the roofs of their huts,
first pulling soil there. It seems quite unusual to us, of course, but
it is true, nevertheless. As a result the Chinese have obtained their
goal; they have overloaded the country with foodstuffs. Today they have
no idea about what to do with the surplus of rice. Chinese scientists
have even invented a recipe for producing fuel from rice. Now imagine
we have attained the same success and started producing petrol and diesel
oil from potatoes. Then we are going to need no Russian power resources.
This seems to be not within the realms of possibility, of course…
Let's decide on the purpose of the main factor, i.e. why things differ
with us and with them. Of the great number of reasons, both objective
and subjective ones, I would name love for land, deep understanding of
land and of its state; the understanding that one should give very much
in order to get something in return. When you give much you will treat
something you have invested in with great care, as if it were your mother.
One should love land as if it were his own mother. Properly speaking,
this is exactly what we see in many developed countries.
In our country things are quite the contrary. They put people off love
for their toiling land; they extirpated this love by collectivization,
repressions and battles for yield. Land used to bring gladness to those
who sowed and ploughed it, to those who grew and gathered the harvest.
How much blood has been shed for our dear land! Practically the whole
of the XX century, that could be called the century of serf relations,
of slave and forced labor in the village, produced hatred for land, in
the long run. Most of village dwellers need land no more. When I meet
them I often ask them whether they would agree to take some land if they
were given it. The answer is always categorical. They say they do not
need it.
As far as it happened that we are not connected with our mother land by
an invigorating umbilical cord, the finale is seen as to be rather a sad
one. All the attempts of Soviet propaganda concerning the need to cultivate
love for land remained vain, as primarily people were put off their love
for land. They were also put off work in general, as their work was not
free and joyous, and it was not estimated at its true worth. It was already
in October of 1917 that this process started. The consequences it had
are well known all over the world.
It is only when land will be the private property of those who work it
that people will love it, nd this love will be mutual. Then people will
not spare themselves for their dear land. Only then land will become a
mother that will be loved, as this is something dear and incomparable.
As a result, no one will have to care about fostering and upbringing of
love for land. Land itself will make people love it, and it will never
betray those who will feel its love. Kolkhoz land was not loved and will
not be loved. This idea is not fresh and has been confirmed by history.
Historically, the destiny of my Motherland is thus that its land is covered
with gore profusely. The fact may be called a tragic dominant idea, as
throughout the whole of its history Belarusian nation struggled against
foreigners for survival. Very often the question was whether the nation
was or was not going to exist at all. The question acquired extremely
acute nature during the World War II, when every fourth citizen of Belarus
was killed. Now there is information this figure could be much higher
if we account that the then number of population was about 10 million.
The country's population amounted to the same number only by the end of
1960s of the last century. To compare it would not out of place to mention
the following fact - the fascist Germany lost about 7 million people at
fronts during the war.
Those Belarusians killed in the war were young people mainly, that means
they were the most able-bodied part of the population. There is no doubt
one cannot speak about any fast restoration of the country after this
tragedy that was aggravated by destroyed national economy. Yet, gradually
and with enormous effort, they rebuilt towns and villages from bottom
up. They also managed to restore human potential, though not for a long
time, unfortunately. At present, when we face acute frontal crisis aggravated
by the Chernobyl tragedy, mortality exceeds birth rate, which is seen
as a tragedy for the state. Natality decreased from almost 150 thousand
in 1960s to less then 10 thousand at the boundary between the second and
third millennium, which is really sad to realize.
My dear Belarus is the land that caressed and warmed people of other nationalities
and became a mother for them, as well. Representatives of about 100 nations
and nationalities live in Belarus today. The Belarusians make up the majority
of the population which is more than 80 per cent. Also the Russians (about
14 per cent), the Polish (more than 4 per cent), the Ukrainians (almost
3 per cent), the Jews (more than 1 per cent), as well as the Tatars, the
Lithuanians, the Latvians, the Gypsies and other nations consider Belarus
to be their motherland. Such is the mentality of our country and of our
Belarusian man who is kindly, good-natured and easy to get on with…
Belarus is my Motherland; this is a holy land that the people in Belarus
gained through much suffering, and defended in a most cruel struggle against
the most civilized barbarians that world history ever witnessed. Like
many of those living on this holy land, I cannot imagine my life without
the oak in the field, charred and almost destroyed by somebody foolish,
without the dear smell of wild flowers, without the pine forest and the
little river near the village Rudna so dear to my heart. All this have
gone through me and my soul, thus through my whole life …
CHAPTER IV
LAND OF FOREFATHERS
Among the great many of Belarusian villages more than one has the simple
and unpretentious name of Rudna. There is more than one in Zhitkovichy
district; there are tens of them in the neighboring Petrikov and Kalinkovichy
districts. Rudna is a kind of toponymy record winner. The explanation
to this is quite simple. The name of the area or a village is exact evidence
that in ancient times, in the Iron Age, 1500-1200 years ago and much later,
people smelted iron in domestic blast-furnaces out of swamp ore of extremely
low quality. 'Rudiy' meant 'red' in Old Slavonic, as swamp ore was red
in color because it contained iron oxides. In some places this production
existed till the middle of XIX century, i.e. a century and a half ago.
Until recently one could see a lot of waste products of the ore-smelting
production in the form of embankments and knolls in the neighborhood of
Rudna and other Polesye villages.
As a hamlet or a settlement, Rudna appeared not far away from the big
old settlement of Kolno. The record of Kolno in the excerpt from the books
of Slonimskiye dealing with the property estate allotment between the
brothers Yury, Yan-Symon and Alexander Alelkovichy dates back to June
6 1582. The castle of Petrikov, Kolno and the borough Lenin went to Alexander
then. Kolno was also marked on the map of Polesye in 1600, along with
Turov, while Zhitkovichi was not marked on the same map. Rudna was called
Kolenskaya Rudna not long ago. Apparently, the inhabitants of Kolno manufactured
iron in the wood here.
There are venerable oaks still growing in Rudna. They are powerful enough,
as they measure several girths of human arms around. One of them has stood
right opposite our small house as long as old village residents can remember.
Even these old trees, however, cannot be the same age as our village itself.
It is mentioned in the 'Supplement to Minsk Eparchial Gazette' of 1879
that Kolenskaya Rudna, as well as tens of other villages, was part of
Zhitkovichy Holy Trinity Church parish. The collection 'Volosts and settlements
of Litva province and Belarusian volosts' (1888) contains information
there were 38 peasant homesteads and 192 inhabitants in Rudna. Families
were so numerous then! In 1908 279 people lived here, of them 26 children
of both sexes at the age of 8-11 (school age). However difficult life
was, but the village grew and was built; the number of its inhabitants
increased, child laughter was heard in the izbas. Many children died,
but still there remained a lot of kiddies in big peasant families. Villages
never faced a population crisis, only natural selection with only the
healthiest and strongest surviving. People used to be strong and healthy…
My distant relative Ivan Albinovich, as far as I can remember, threw a
haycock onto a haystack at a stroke. A sturdy sort of people they were
…
In the old settlement of Kolno, not far from Rudna, at the beginning of
the past century there lived 760 people, of them 76 children. Rudna itself
was more similar to the nearby village of Greben that was at a distance
of only three kilometers. It had practically the same number of the population;
living conditions were similar, too. At the time life of a peasant was
not a piece of cake. It has never been, by the way. The oldest dweller
of Greben F. I. Gulyuta remembers: 'Our family consisted of ten people,
while we had less than two dessiatinas of land. We had a cow, though,
but we wished we hadn't as our father had to work for the landowner in
Buikovichy 10 days a month for our cow to pasture on his meadow. But how
could children survive without milk otherwise? We did not always have
a piece of bread to eat. The father exerted himself to his utmost working
for both himself and the landowner, so he lived a short life. At the beginning
of the century there were about 20 or 30 homesteads in Greben, and almost
every day there were funerals. Children who were in plenty in peasant
families died particularly often… The landowners Kenevich and Levandovsky
had so much land one could not take it in at a glance. Whenever children
ran into the landlord's forest and picked a berry, they were fined in
case they were noticed by the forest warden. Whenever a cow got to the
meadow there was a fine to be paid. One also had to pay to be allowed
to gather mushrooms in the wood.'…
The peasant seemed to live a very bad, poor, cold and hungry life. There
was no gleam of hope under the moral and material oppression… Life was
not a piece of cake, of course. No one can assert the peasant's life was
serene. Life was as it was, although living conditions might have been
somewhat better. In Germany, for example, peasant's life was easier and
more joyful even at the time.
Yet, things are cognized when compared. The real hell started later, in
the 1920s and the early 1930s when all-round collectivization was continually
gaining in scope, arrests on a mass scale started and when the People's
Commissariat of Home Affairs, the 'snatcher' as they also called it, stretched
its wings out all over the country…Yet, before the revolution a peasant
hired by a landowner to mow received 80 kopeks or a ruble a day at the
very least; a reaper who cut rye received 50 kopeks a day. Still, peasants
asked for a ruble or a ruble and a half accordingly. They ignored work
when the season was at its height, so their requirements were met in most
cases. After two or three days a mower could earn enough to buy boots
while after a week, working together with his wife, they could buy a cow
that cost less than 10 rubles.
So here is the example from the very first pages of the well-known novel
by the proletarian writer Maxim Gorky 'Mother' that dwells on the life
of factory workers. Pavel Vlasov went to work to a plant of some leeching
bourgeois, and after he received his first pay packet he was able to buy
an accordion, plush trousers, a tie, a present for his mother and to get
dead drunk in addition… After 1917 a man had to work for perhaps about
a year to afford all this. Things are cognized when compared is an old
truth. We will be able to compare the life of a peasant before the 1917
coup and following it …
In Rudna and neighboring villages people might have lived a bit easier
life. Like everywhere one had to break their back from morning till night
on their own land if one had any; yet, practically nobody had land in
abundance. According to the statistics of the provincial land administration
in the North East area, every sixth peasant homestead had no horse; eight
per cent of families had no land of their own, so they had either to go
off in search of a living and work for landowners and more prosperous
peasants or to join the army of proletarians in towns. As we see, the
percentage of land-hungry poor peasants was not so big. The main problem
for peasant families, in fact, was the need to divide their plots of land
among their sons. The latter, in their turn, had to divide among theirs.
This resulted in having nothing to divide; yet, one had to go on living…
No wonder the Russian Prime Minister P. A. Stolypin, following the inglorious
was of 1904-1905 between Russia and Japan, decided to stake on the khutor
system and on giving peasants poor land on favorable terms and moving
them to khutors.
Many peasants in Rudna, young people mainly, came to work as farm-hands
for well-to-do peasants, for landlords Levandovskis in neighboring Buykovichy,
or did some seasonal jobs. The estate 'Buykovichy' was a model farm at
the time. The work was done according to rules of agricultural technology.
Sturdy premises were built, a distillery and a mill worked. There was
also a big garden there. Several decades later the model farm of Levandovskaya
in Buykovichy would be destroyed by militant Communards, but in the meanwhile
peasants could earn some money working for this landowner doing some seasonal
or regular work and thus improving their well-being. At the end of the
past century the area was developed at a high speed. In 1870s Polesye
railway was being built. Its rails were laid not far from Rudna, in Zhitkovichi.
The railway promoted quick growth of the borough. Many dwellers of Rudna
took part in the work. They raised embankments and laid rails. The poet
N. A. Nekrasov described building another, St. Petersburg's, railway in
his poem 'Railway', but working conditions of navvies were similar, of
course, so the lines 'Do you see the tall sick Belarusian wasted by fever
who is standing over there?' may as well be applied to those who were
building railway in Polesye, and the Belarusian might have been a peasant
from Rudna. Nevertheless, the railway was built in a very short time,
unlike the Baikal-Amur main line widely known in its time, which has not
been finished so far. The preliminaries before building Polesye railway
started in spring in 1883, while the first train came to Zhitkovichi February
15, 1886. The dwellers of Rudna must have heard the whistle of a steam-engine
that day.
Here also worked General I. I. Zhilinsky's expedition, they drained Polesye
marshes. The canals dug by navvies by hand, with their spades, have generally
remained hitherto, being of substantial benefit. Forest exploitation was
intensive as well. Hands were in need everywhere. Life of peasants in
Rudna differed little from that of the peasants in other Belarusian villages
and settlements. People made their both ends meet somehow; they rejoiced
and grieved, were born and died… Then the year 1917 came that brought
about drastic global changes in the life of the whole country and of every
of its citizens. But nobody could foresee at the time even in a bad dream
then the significance of those changes, as well as the bitterness and,
for some people, the joys the change of epochs would bring following the
autumn of the memorable 1917.
Soils in the neighborhood of Rudna were poor. They were sandy mainly,
but they could feed the grain-grower at the very least if he was a hard-working
man. This is rather a forest area; even hayfields are situated at a considerable
distance from the village. The inhabitants of Rudna are used to free life.
Peasant izbas in the village are often scattered randomly, without keeping
to any strict order of streets. The Kotsubinskiyes, the Rozhalovskiyes,
the Yukhnevichis and the Kirbais lived in Rudna since olden times. They
were ordinary peasants who did not differ from other peasants. Their grandfathers
and forefathers smelted swamp ore here and won plots of arable land from
the wood and the swamp. They came from the ancient tribe of Dregovichi.
Their capital was Turov, situated at a short distance from here. One can
just imagine how much sweat and, it may as well be so, blood they poured
into this long-suffering Polesye land for many centuries, for it to give
birth to a genuine great talent once… Generally speaking, the past of
Turov land is rich not only in history but in talented personalities,
as well. Kirill Turovsky who was a great enlightener, a scholar, a man
of letters and a bishop, matters a lot for the culture of the whole of
Belarus. He is known as 'a silver-tongued orator whose name shone brighter
than anyone else's all over Rus.' One can also mention the names of saints
Boris and Gleb, Lavrentiy and Martin. In Turov land once there lived and
ruled Konstantin Ostrozhsky who was a man of profound culture. In his
library he kept The Turov Gospel, the first of its kind in the country…
As a rule, talents such as scientists, cosmonauts, public and political
figures, are born in province, in out-of-the-way places, in the village.
Bolsheviks' literature and the press, being over-ideologized, corrupt
and suppressed by censorship, glorified the post-revolutionary life of
peasants and workers. Gradually, they started to ponder if there was any
need to stir up this trouble and the coup of 1917, if life had become
worse in many, almost in all, respects. Did people work less? The answer
was they did not. According to Lenin's decree peasants were given land,
but for a short time only. A decade later it was taken away and all-round
collectivization of the village was declared. A person had to break his
back working it as much as he did while working landowner's or rented
land if one wanted to receive something in return. Goods in shops disappeared
completely, there was utter goods shortage. Printed cotton could be found
in a shop once a year only. Yet, one could not buy it with money as peasants
did not have any. Things could be acquired by natural exchange only. What
happened if people wanted to buy any machinery, such as threshers or mowers?
Before the revolution one could club together to buy them freely in the
shop of merchants Bermans, so that several neighboring homesteads could
make use of them. Now there was no machinery on sale, the reasons being
economic dislocation after the civil war and endless rotation of powers.
The old machinery that remained in some estates of landowners, e.g. in
Buykovichi, was pilfered, destroyed and burnt by representatives of the
new authority, the so-called present-day top dogs…
Before the World War I Russia provided half of the world with its grain
and was one of the four most industrially developed countries of the planet.
Now they landed on the scrapheap and had to begin everything from scratch
both in towns and in villages. These were the evident and loud consequences
of the coup, while a lot of deep ones could be found in the spheres of
culture, morals and ideology…
Meanwhile, the village lived a life its own. My grandmother Marpha Yakovlevna
Kirbai was still young and brisk then. She held together the big and friendly
family in my grandfather's nest that was not yet destroyed. Her parents
and grandparents on both her mother's and father's sides, the Kotsubinskiyes
and the Kirbais, ploughed land here, went to work in neighboring estates
and visited fairs in Kolno and Zhitkovichi on high days and holidays.
They were ordinary peasants, sloggers and lack-alls… As time passed, people,
authorities and customs were changing. The life itself changed drastically.
The inhabitants of Rudna endured the hardships of the war hard times and
deadly ordeals in late autumn of 1920 when the army of the chevalier of
industry Stanislav Bulak-Bulakhovich who dreamt to occupy Moscow with
its bitty army was rolling to the West, back to Poland, after being defeated
at Kakinkovichi and Mozyr. The soldiers of this army came also to Rudna
where they pillaged and committed outrages. Many villages on their way
were burnt, while people were killed and tortured. Turov suffered particularly
then, as it was in neutral zone and served as a jumping-off ground for
the offensive of Bulakhovich's army against Soviet Russia.
The foam of the fratricidal civil war wave that was given rise to by 1917
was coming off… Quiet and peace finally set in Polesye, though peasants
here never lived a calm and serene life. Nevertheless, the 1920s when
peasants became aware of being real land owners for the first time might
have been the happiest and most comfortable years. People worked for themselves,
freely and willingly. They gathered good crop, paid taxes and State deliveries.
The state was reviving and setting on its feet. People acquired certainty
of the future. Rudna, like all Belarusian villages, had livened up, and
was as populous and inhabited as it had never been before. In 1924 it
numbered 87 homesteads, with 492 people living in them. The information
about the number of pupils in the village did not remain in the archive;
they might have numbered about a hundred. It is known for sure that the
school was big as it had three stoves to heat the classes, while only
the school in Ludenevichi had four stoves. There lived six people in each
homestead on the average; most of them were children, of course. The atmosphere
of animation, as well as high birth rate, seemed to be the prospect of
the Belarusian village but it actually turned out to be a temporary advance
the village had never faced before and is not going to face any more…
Life in Rudna, as well as in every small town and village, was full of
enthusiasm and moral upsurge. People developed an eager interest for life,
acquired certainty of the future and cheerfulness. S. Yukhnevich, chairperson
of the Village Soviet in Rudna, reported to Zhitkovichi district executive
committee on May 3, 1925:
May 1 was celebrated in the village of Rudna in the following way. In
the evening of April 25, 1925 a joint meeting of the Village Soviet and
the Lenin Communist Union of Youth (LCUY) cell, the teacher of Rudna school
German participating, took place. The teacher offered to erect a platform
in the school yard and we did so on Sunday, April 26… On May 1 all members
of the Village Soviet and pupils headed by the teacher German gathered
in the LCUY club, and then they walked along the village streets in orderly
lines holding a banner and singing revolutionary songs. The whole of the
youth of both sexes, as well as the citizens of middle and old ages took
part in the manifestation. Everyone came to the school and drew up at
the platform. Chairman of the Village Soviet S Yukhnevich opened the grand
meeting. He did not make a speech of welcome only; he also dwelt on the
history of celebrating May 1. Further speeches were made by the representative
of the district party committee Babunov, by students Nazaruk and Golovach.
On behalf of Rudna LCUY cell speeches were made by Feldman and Stepan
Golovach. Marfa Golovach made a speech on behalf of women, while Ivan
Yukhnevich and Michail Pilkevich spoke on behalf of the Village Soviet.
All those mentioned above not only made speeches of welcome and congratulated
people, but they also pointed at the significance of celebrating May 1,
thus holding to the theses sent by the district party committee. Then
the pupil Nikolai Rozhalovsky made a speech of welcome on behalf of the
pupils of Rudna school; later the teacher German threw light upon the
events in Germany and explained an advantage of proletarian science over
bourgeois one in detail. In his closing speech the teacher pointed at
the need of a close union between the town and the village, the worker
and the ploughman. The following resolution was adopted at the meeting,'
After hearing the report of our comrades, which dealt with the comparison
of customs and laws in Russia before the revolution and at present time
we, the citizens of the Rudna Village Soviet, celebrate May 1 freely,
send White Guard torturers our proletarian curse and promise solemnly
to stand for Soviet power at the first summons.'
Long live the world revolution! Long live May 1!
In conclusion 'Marseillaise' was sung.
Today silence, desolation and loneliness reign in Belarusian villages,
Rudna being no exception… In 1994 my village numbered 102 homesteads with
210 inhabitants living in them, among them 36 children. 74 of the inhabitants
were able-bodied. Now there are twice as few children, as well as able-bodied
grown-ups, while every eight or nine out of ten people in Rudna are pensioners.
Now there are no more than a hundred and a half of dwellers in the village,
with their number decreasing gradually. Of the indigene population there
are practically few people left in the village. Every fifth or sixth izba
has its windows boarded up, while just one house is being built in the
whole of the village. This is the true picture of a Belarusian village.
Even Rudna, the centre of the Village Soviet, which used to be a large,
busy and populous village, is gradually dying out today, to say nothing
of small patriarchal villages…
The early 1930s were a crucial epoch in the village as collectivization
broke out. So many reviews, works and memories have been devoted to it,
enthusiastic, laudatory and gloomy, joyless. If collectivization had been
carried out by more humane and philanthropic methods, and for a longer
period (in fact every person in a superior position, every official ranging
from the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party to the
lowest chairman in the Village Soviet were trying to reduce the period
to show themselves to the best advantage in the eyes of higher chiefs)
it would not have drawn on so much grief, so many misfortunes, tears and
pangs. Kulaks, who were actually the best, most able and hard-working
peasants, were expelled from villages. They were arrested and exiled under
compulsion to northern areas of the country, thus being doomed to torments
and death, while their property, land, cattle and buildings were given
to kolkhozes organized in a slapdash manner. Many guiltless people were
subject to repressions, yet two villages in Zhitkovichi district - Lagvoshchi
and Rudna - suffered most. Lagvoshchi was situated near the frontier.
A great many Polish people lived in the village; there was even a Polish
national club and a school. Thus, to the benefit of the state security
it was decided to get rid of the people. Rudna inhabitants suffered the
same fate. No wonder chairman of the Zhitkovichi district executive committee
N. Krichevtsev in his summary report in 1925 said, 'Bronislav Village
Soviet (Lagvoshchi was a part of it; and the village Bronislav itself
suffered from repressions a great deal), Rudna and part of Zhitkovichi
Village Soviets are inhabited by the so-called gentry who haven't got
rid of old traditions yet and who consider themselves be head and shoulder
over peasants. Most of the gentry live a rich life and organize their
own manufacture. New life finds its acceptance poorly among this part
of the population…' It must have been this report that caused soon afterwards
mass genocide in Rudna which took lives of 42 peasants. Strange as it
may seem, in other villages of the Village Soviet there were one or two
people repressed, even in the big old village of Kolno.
The national archive of the Republic of Belarus keeps a list of Zhitkovichi
volost revolutionary committee members of January 25, 1920. Among eight
revolutionary committee members (their chairperson was Nikita Lukyanovich)
there is Nikolai Yakovlevich Kotsubinski, born in 1896, who was brother
of my grandmother Marpha Kirbai. It goes without saying that only an active
person, a staunch supporter of the Soviet power who performed certain
services to this power, could become a member of the committee. Nevertheless,
in the autumn of 1937 he did not escape the 'black raven' that seized
him, as well as many other village dwellers and never let him slip out
of its 'claws'. The same year Petr, the elder brother of Marpha Yakovlevna,
was arrested. Both brothers Kotsubinskiye were executed by shooting in
the autumn of 1937, thus the whole agnate of the family was rooted out…
My grandfather Alexander Vikentyevich Kirbai was far from being a common,
ordinary builder of the new life in the late 1920s, too. By now no person
can remember and tell how much strength, health and nerves he spent for
the sake of Soviet power strengthening and kolkhoz organization. He happened
to hear so many threats and to bear so many insults! On the outskirts
of the village Naida there lived a lone wolf who remained an individual
peasant until the war, yet, he was not arrested and shot. It seems the
authorities worked in a strange and selective manner. This man used to
say, 'Let Kirbai come to my yard with his persuasions… He will immediately
stop a bullet!' But chairman would come, not to him but to others who
were hesitant, doubtful, frightened, and who resisted openly. As a result,
more and more peasants put in applications to the kolkhoz, some in a deliberate
and voluntary way, others being frightened and threatened, and some after
the example of their neighbor…
By February 1, 1931 the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya Belorussia' numbered 25 homesteads,
of them 8 poor peasant and 17 average means peasant, which was approximately
a third of the homesteads in the village. A year later collectivization
here, as well as all over the country, was considered to be over though
practically nowhere it was 100 per cent even before the war. No matter
what ways and powers it was attained by it was the final result, the final
figure and the percentage that were important to the authorities. Any
means could do to achieve the result … In fact, if we take a closer look
we can see the result was contrary to the one expected. Indeed, the Bolsheviks
managed to rid peasants of the much hated ownership of land as of the
main means of production. Likewise, they removed workers in towns from
profit through nationalization of plants and factories. Thus, peasants
were saved from land, means of production and, naturally, from results
of their labor. Nothing other than their conscience incentives and ageless
peasant conscientiousness and industry could make them get interested
in working better. Moreover, unlike factory workers, they had to work
practically free, for work-days. Kolkhozes turned out to be a kind of
hybrid between serfdom and labor army which L. Trotsky stood up for so
zealously. All this resulted in many economic troubles very soon and destroyed
social, economic and moral life foundations in the village. Retribution
for violent and thoughtless collectivization turned out to be very severe;
this retribution is still in process…
In 1930s the magazine 'Shlyakhi kalektyvizatsiyi' (Ways of collectivization)
was published in Minsk. In summer 1931 its correspondent Yurka Snitko
came to Rudna. Soon the magazine published his article 'Brilliant results
of piece-work' (as we can see, it was already then that such conditions
for work were of interest to people and brought good results, yet for
many decades afterwards socialist economy refused to have anything to
do with piece-rate basis as it was more profitable to pay everyone some
chicken feed in equal portions). The article said, 'In the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya
Belorussia' all work is done on a piece-rate basis this year. Due to piece-work
and well-considered output rates, the pace of work and collective farmers'
interest in working with great dispatch have increased significantly.
If last year's flax and vegetable weeding lasted for too long, and haymaking
was not over even in August, this year things are absolutely different.
The hay-makers team of 14 people headed by the team-leader Kotsubinskiy
(this must have been Nikolai Yakovlevich, the brother of my grandmother
Marpha, the former Zhitkovichi volost revolutionary committee member)
on June 27mowed 8.8 hectares of grass. In accordance with output rate
set in the kolkhoz (3 or 4 people mow a hectare, depending on the quality
of hayfield )it should take 27 people to mow the same area.
Kolkhoz management board noted down in every mower's work-book 2.4 work-days,
taking into account that the work is hard and thus one is given 1.25 work-days
each day.
The team of 16 people who gather hay cocked hay on the area of 5 hectares,
while according to output rates it should take 25 collective farmers to
work on this area. Those who did the hard work of hay cocking were given
1.95 work-days while eight others were given 1.55 work-days. One can give
many examples of the kind… Due to piece-work there is an influx of both
poor and average means peasants to the kolkhoz. They finished weeding
flax, millet and allotment crops, and gathered clover in good time. Now
they finish haymaking.'
Collectivization rates and indices in Rudna were good; only the artels
(co-operative associations of peasants) in Naida and Buikovichi had similar
rates as after the breakup of the commune, on the basis of the former
landowner's estate, there were good conditions for the collective farm
in the villages. Yet, the rates did not suit district authorities who
demanded 'to speed up', 'to intensify' and 'to press on'… In the district
newspaper 'Prymezhny kamunar' of September 10, 1931 somebody called 'Voka'
noted that in the district in the last two years there had been a 'very
slow influx' of poor peasants and peasants of average means to kolkhozes.
2200 homesteads were not members of kolkhozes; they were individual peasants,
with almost half of them living in the three Village Soviets - Ludenevichi,
Vetka and Rudna.
Early in March of 1932 Zhitkovichi district was visited by First Secretary
of the Central Committee of the CPSU [B] of Belarus (Communist Party of
the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks]) N.F. Gikalo who acquainted himself with
the state of affairs in the district and visited the machine and tractor
station, the district palace of social culture and several district enterprises.
Later on, accompanied by secretary of the district committee of the party
Bogdanov, he came to visit villages of the district, Ludenevichi, Bronislav
and Rudna in particular. He must have met chairman of the Rudna kolkhoz
Alexander Kirbai, the more so because this kolkhoz was the first one in
the district and had advanced showing. It was already at that time that
the kolkhoz had a large pig-raising farm, and N.F. Gikalo made a speech
on international situation and answered numerous questions of collective
farmers in the 'Red Corner' (room providing recreational and educational
facilities) of the farm.
Collectivization in the country was gaining in scope and expanding like
an avalanche that knocks everything down, crushes down everything on its
way, carries away and often buries… Its most active champion in Rudna
was Alexander Vikentyevich Kirbai, as fate willed, but rather due to his
honest, uncompromising and straightforward nature.
Yevdokim Klochok, my wife Tamara Nikolayevna's grandfather, belonged to
the wide range of the unbending revolutionaries who later fell to thinking
and lost their faith. In the middle of 1930s he got to Stalin camps; he
never knew why. It fell to his lot to be a prisoner of the notorious 'Sevlag',
the wild North directorate of camps. He built the railway where now fast
trains with the romantic name 'North Palmira' speed along. Certainly,
he did not have the ghost of a chance to survive, yet, he was lucky enough
to be taken hospital attendant to the camp hospital by a camp doctor who
used to treat Valerian Kuybyshev himself. I used to go by this railway
when I had to earn my living as a member of a construction team, or rather
as voluntary exile or a seasonal slave, to be more exact. When going by
train, I could not shake off the feeling the train was rolling over bones
instead of rails…
It pains and distresses me to be conscious of the death of the best village
dwellers; their graves buried under lime are unknown…. Nevertheless, one
cannot blot it out of his memory. Although, when the book 'Memory. A documentary
chronicle' of Zhitkovichi district came out in Minsk in the early 1990s,
the names of the repressed brothers Kotsubinskiye, of Nikolai and Vatslav
Kirbais were mentioned, equally with names of hundreds of other Zhitkovichi
dwellers, but the name of the first chairman of the kolkhoz in Rudna Alexander
Vikentyevich Kirbai was not mentioned through negligence and indifference
of local authorities.
My grandmother Marpha Yakovlevna outlived her brothers for a short while.
She died in February 1950 though she was not old at the time. It was hard
youth and war time burden she had suffered, as well as poverty and exhausting
work in post-war years that had told on her. In my grandmother Marpha's
house which still stands in Rudna her grandchildren were born; they were
fated to continue the cause of their fathers and grandfathers… There were
also so many families, both related and alien, that lived under the roof
of the house in the hard war and post-war years! Misfortune and trouble
used to unite and reconcile people, so strangers often lived one united
family, unlike these days…
The fate of village izbas is such that they survive several generations
and no matter how old the building is it will last a century or more as
long as there is a gleam of life in it, the stove being stoked and there
is a light in the windows; but as soon as it is left by its inhabitants
the house is weakened at once, it rots, sinks and turns black. Any house,
even an ancient one, seems to be young and cheerful when it is filled
with voices and clear children's laughter. Have you ever noticed that
storks do not settle on the roofs of uninhabited izbas that are so numerous
in the contemporary village today while crows grow roots there at once?
Rudna, like most Belarusian villages, suffered a lot, though it was not
burnt; it suffered losses in people, in hard-working village dwellers.
My fellow-villagers did not stand off the nation-wide struggle against
the enemy, either. At the beginning of spring 1944 an initiative group
was detached from the 50th Zhitkovichi partisan brigade. The 117th partisan
detachment consisting of Rudna Village Soviet inhabitants, 226 men strong,
was set up on the basis of the group. The detachment was headed by Vasiliy
Syrovatskiy, its commissar was Matvei Khilko. After joining the units
of the Red Army, an almost full-fledged company of men became allotted
to it. Thirty-eight Rudna inhabitants were killed as members of partisan
detachments or at the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. About twenty
of its peaceful inhabitants were killed by occupants either in the village
or in the forest where people were hiding in hard times. All work and
hardships of economy rehabilitation in the first post-war years fell to
the lot of several men, invalids and aged mainly, but primarily of teenagers
and women.
The village was healing the wounds of war very slowly. In 1945 and the
year following big batches of cattle were arriving from Germany to the
country it destroyed. They were really big and heavy cows of black and
white color, with spots, a genuine German breed. About 50 heads of the
cows, as well as 3 horses, were given to the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya Belorussia'.
The state also provided the kolkhoz with seeds, which was some help. The
most poverty-stricken families with many children, whose fathers died,
received several cows from Germany.
What was a characteristic feature of the village life in 1950s? As usual,
it was hard, exhausting and, what is most important, practically free
labor. The village was already rebuilt after the war devastation. The
youth who could not leave the village as they had no passport had already
grew up. There were enough hands, new houses were built and a lot of young
families appeared. Peasants who did not have any passports could not leave
the kolkhoz; the same was in serfdom time when after the notorious St.
George's Day peasants could not leave for another landowner. To leave
the village and get fixed up in a job in the town (which was practically
impossible without a passport, by the way) or to go to study there one
had to obtain a certificate from the kolkhoz saying that the board did
not object… In 1960s, when some of the youth born after the war were leaving
the village, it was not so difficult to do. Orphans whose fathers were
killed at the front or in the partisan detachment were always given necessary
certificates freely. Those who were repressed guiltlessly still remained
enemies. People preferred not to remember about them at all. They were
razed from life as if they had never existed and were forgotten silently…
There were quite many young men and women in Rudna who left without hesitation
making use of the right their fathers obtained by their death.
In 1966 work-days for work in the kolkhoz were abolished and money wage
was introduced. Work-day is a conventional wage-rate determined according
to some incomprehensible output rates for some work or another. It was
introduced when kolkhozes were set up. There were strictly definite rates
for any work. One work-day, for example, meant it was necessary to mow
0.45 hectare of grass, while you had to mow 0.48 hectare of meadow grass
and 0.4 hectare of top grass. To get one work-day a person had to cut
0.1 hectare of rye, or to load with a pitchfork, to bring to the field
and to unload 4 tons of manure or 7 tons of hay. In a day one could earn
either 1.5 or even 2 work-days or 0.3-0.5 work-days. A woman could receive
1.5 or 2 work-days for repairing sacks though the work could take her
a week; the reason was they said it was not hard work. The same number
of work-days could be given to a stableman or an invalid for repairing
horse-collars.
The year over, the harvest gathered and calculated, obligatory State Deliveries
handed over and results of kolkhoz' economic performance known, the general
meeting of collective farmers or the meeting of the board determined how
much people had to be paid for work-days. The year being productive, one
could expect to receive 0.3-0.4 kilos of rye, 1-1.5 kilos of potatoes,
1-1.5 rubles (before 1961) per work-day though frequently they received
much less… Late in autumn a peasant would bring to his homestead a cart
loaded with potatoes and several sacks of grain, which was the result
of his work during the year.
Team-leaders and field-team leaders who worked like everyone else did
and received a small bonus for combining jobs, as well as chairmen of
kolkhozes' boards, were also due to be given a definite number of work-days,
though the margin between this number and that of other collective farmers'
was negligible. I remember my father, chairman of the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya
Belorussia', just like other kolkhoz heads in the district, was given
500 work-days per year, though the reprimands, reproofs and surcharges
he received were more numerous. An honest and hard-working person, especially
the one working on a regular basis and having a remunerative job, could
earn the same number of work-days or even more.
Now, after he received several metric centners of grain and potatoes,
as well as 500 or 700 rubles (in old money, before 1961) for the work
in kolkhoz during the year, the peasant had to pay taxes in the first
place, then to buy the indispensable foodstuffs and other things - salt,
sugar, matches and kerosene, as well as to buy clothes and footwear and
to fit his children out for school… Boots cost 100-150 rubles, while a
quilted coat which was indispensable for the peasant cost more than a
hundred. A cow cost three or four thousand rubles, though soon after the
exchange of money in 1961 its cost amounted to seven or eight hundred
rubles. This is an obvious result of denomination that we constantly come
across these days when salaries remain practically the same while money
falls in value. One can be only filled with wonder how peasants could
survive in such conditions. As we can see, living conditions in the village
used to be and still remain much worse than before the revolution…
How could a peasant survive in the conditions when he received practically
nothing for his labor but had to pay huge taxes? He had to pay for a cow
and every hen, for fruit-trees in the garden and for his personal plot
(of thirty hundredth part per family on average). The skin of a pig or
a calf that was grown up and slaughtered had to be peeled and handed over
to the state… The extortionate taxes were mostly abolished after the death
of Stalin when until January 1955 the state government was headed by Georgiy
Malenkov who was undeservedly and endlessly thanked by collective farmers
for doing so for many years afterwards. Anyway, how did peasants manage
to survive before taxes were abolished? To a certain extent, the market
in Zhitkovichi which was a huge shed in the centre of the settlement,
especially busy at weekends and on high days, came to help. They carried
from villages and sold there cabbage, apples, meat, milk, fat and beans
dirt-cheap, to gain at least a small sum of money in order to pay taxes
and buy some clothes and footwear.
In 1953, the year of death of Joseph Stalin, the murderous tyrant whom
it was mortally dangerous even to call like this, I went to the first
form of Rudna primary school, though I was going to be seven only in two
months. The teacher Maria Ivanovna Yukhnevich distinguished, as far as
I remember, my diligence and studiousness, as well as my love for books
and passion for reading, though it was not encouraged in peasant families,
as a matter of fact. Here one needed another science and passion for land
and one's farm. Though I never refused any housework, my father, a strict
man whom life rarely indulged and petted, was frequently discontented.
He could start splitting hairs at any time, especially when out of mood
or drunk; by the way he got drunk quite often, on every occasion, like
everyone did and does in the village, because a glass of wine colored
gloomy life with blue flowers of delusive happiness. In these cases my
father was free with his belt that left its traces on my body for quite
a long time…
Nevertheless, despite the firm and strict discipline in our house, there
was still some spirit of freedom about it. No one was prohibited to express
his opinion and to argue if one thought himself to be right. I shared
a room with my brother. The room overlooked a mighty centuries old oak-tree
which might have been older than the village itself. The room was modest
and small, the table there was always heaped up with books, while the
whole of the izba was less than thirty square meters. The small front
room where the greater part was taken up by a stove was always crowded
and boisterous, especially in the evenings, when village dwellers used
to come and go away, play the domino, smoke and argue themselves hoarse.
On holidays they drank wine and discussed village and national news and
problems as if they could solve them.
Our family had a spirit of decency and mutual aid, of emotional freedom.
This was mainly due to my mother who despite her being extremely busy
in the kolkhoz and about the house always took an interest in my and my
brother's affairs. In her heart of hearts she was a intellectual person
who had a gust of the world and people.
Alexandra Alexandrovna, my dear and deeply respected mother, used to shake
her head in doubt and some perplexity and say, 'I should never have thought
you were going to get to the top of the ladder after such poverty and
hardships!' I think, though, it is exactly these circumstances that strengthen
the mind and the body that can bring up a real man. Those who are pampered
and spoilt since their very childhoods, who do not know any troubles or
hardships are weak!
A light and bright outlet of my life was encounter with nature. Nature
seems to be everywhere around in the village. For a peasant it is a common,
everyday and usual picture, like the view of a neighboring house that
a town-dweller's window commands. Nevertheless, it is only partially true
that nature is something habitual… There is no person in the world that
does not have the feeling of native land, the land familiar to him since
his childhood, his dear nature and his parents' nest. The feeling develops
in babyhood, with the first child's impressions, it grows and intensifies
together with a person's growth and dies when time comes, together with
the person. Native countryside, like the mother, is the only one of its
kind. All the charms of the universe can never substitute for the view
the window of your parents' home commands, i.e. some hillock with an oak
or birch-tree growing there that your best and brightest memories are
connected with. Your native heath you put your labor into, shed your sweat
and got corns on your hands while working, gets even dearer and sweeter
to you. Every inch of land is familiar to the touch; you mowed here, when
your father was still alive, some June morning while the dew was still
on the ground. The scythe hanging in the threshing-floor which smells
of old dusty hay has not yet been eaten away with rust. Here I ploughed
the land and saw off sunset under this tree…
There are no particularly picturesque landscapes in the neighborhood of
Rudna. The once beautiful, still and insignificant rivulet Naut is disfigured
now. It lost both its picturesque appearance and water as a result of
overly-active work of land-reclamation specialists. Rudna borders a wood
on the north and the east, though the wood is not what it used to be,
as cutting down, tapping and anthropogenic influence have done their part.
The things happening in the nearby Pripyat National Park that used to
be the only landscape and hydrologic nature reserve in the Soviet Union
make my heart bleed. People say that due to the dictates of high officials
thousand-year-old oaks, the pride of Polesye, are being cut down, so forest
reserves that used to be the richest ones are turning into a desert. The
Turov land once had to experience the same when woods were destroyed in
a barbarous way by different English concessions at the end of XVII century.
But then the emperor Paul I stopped this outrage by his decree, drove
all the plunderers out and handed their property to the state treasury.
Yet, who is going to protect the reserve today?
At the distance of 10 kilometers from Rudna the Pripyat flows. Its flood
plain Obolonye with the blue free distance, with oaks, oxbows and lakes
is a real oasis of beauty and inspiration. In summer at haymaking time
Obolonye is boisterous like a fair in the settlement; there are voices,
laughter and din of machinery everywhere. People try to make hay in the
quickest way possible now when the weather is fine. At that time no idle
fisherman can be met on the bank of the river or a lake.
By evening work tension calms down. Here and there fires are laid near
islets of bushes or under oak-trees. The smoke of fires gets mixed up
with evening fog. It floats over the plain and extends to the river. By
the time the sun has already set behind the distant wood edge. The fading
day has sheen like gold. The work at the meadow during harvest time cannot
be over until it is daylight… What period can be better, more beautiful
and exciting in the native land than this time? Summer evenings are dear
and memorable by contemplation of the surroundings and of oneself, by
talks with worldly-wise, older and experienced village dwellers, by estrangement
from troubles, worries and problems and by complete merging with nature.
I shall never forget staying overnight at a fire on an armful of hay or
at a hayloft on the fresh fragrant hay that was made in fine weather,
the hay that absorbed all scents of meadow plants and flowers, all fragrances
of the summer. I will remember this forever…
It is only in such picturesque places and corners of our homeland that
the soul wakes up, blossoms and turns to creative work, to making a verse
or a song. If my home village Rudna, the Pripyat, Obolonye, ancient Turov,
echoes of hoary antiquity and works by Kirill Turovsky had not captivated
my soul in my childhood, there would be no verses and songs that I wrote
much later… The simple way of life, labor on a meadow or in a field which
was not a burden but, rather, joy, a match for young strength and energy
looking for an outlet… Thanks God, all this existed, exists now and I
hope will exist as long as we live and will exist afterwards, so long
as my native Belarus will exist under the peaceful sky…
CHAPTER V
HARD LIFE OF A PEASANT
What can one add to the above lines while thinking about the life of
the people? Why is it exactly our nation that has had such dreadful fate
throughout its history? It was only violence exercised by those who rule
that brought our people to this kind of life, the violence exercised for
many centuries and being both physical and spiritual in its nature. It
is exactly this circumstance that should be raised to the rank of a phenomenon
in world history. One can only be surprised at the vitality of the nation
as it has endured violence both inside and outside the country.
Present-day life of the nation gives plenty of food to think whether things
were always as bad as this, or whether things at present are better than
they used to be, or whether things in the past we worse than they are
today. Here we should highlight the task of proper emphasizing. Perhaps
we, intellectuals, just show off our intelligence, though we do not know
anything about our nation, and think up all sorts of things in the silence
of our studies? I wonder whether intellectual just grumbles or the grief
of the nation makes him cry. Yet, undoubtedly, the main things to rely
on will be real life and historic truth.
The actual life, especially the village life, cannot be called other than
appalling. National agriculture is razed to the ground, though it used
to be the main, basic source of peasant existence in the rural area. As
far back as 15 years ago every peasant homestead had a lot of living creatures,
e.g. at least 2 cows, 3 or 4 pigs, up to 30 hens, from 20 to 50 ducks,
geese, turkey-hens and so on. Peasants fed themselves by choice organic
food; moreover, they provided their sons and daughters who went to cities
in search of better life. The help of parents (let's call it surplus-appropriation
system) to their children was quite appreciable. I remember going home
to get this aid myself when I was a student. The aid was always abundant.
I was given pork, smoked foods, mushrooms, jam, fish and hens… What I
liked most was a stuffed goose my mother would give me for the journey.
In the student hostel in a company of four or five friends we were through
with it, though with difficulty. Unfortunately, all this is a past reality.
Peasant cattle-sheds have become empty and there are less than twenty
cows in the village of 180 homesteads.
How can one assess and qualify this state of affairs? We cannot call it
other than tragic…
When I come to the village I always meet my relatives and village fellow-men,
whose number has become scanty. We talk for a long time. As a rule, any
peasant is a wise man. Practically everyone knows or, rather, used to
know what should be done both in the village and in the country to make
life better. Today no one talks about any bright prospects, as they do
not see any, for people are crushed by indigence. I happened to meet an
optimist, though, who said,' Do you remember our life in post-war time?
We had nothing then. We drank only processed milk that had no traces of
fat and was shot with blue. Nevertheless, we survived.' It is significant
that practically no one of those participating in the talk paid attention
to the fact that hungry village survived in post-war time. When I noted
that more than half a century has passed since the war was over, my opponent
waved his hand and said,' So what? If we have potato we are going to survive.'
As we see people are driven to extremes. At the beginning of the third
millennium, when almost all European countries, as well as the USA, Japan,
South and East Asia, Australia and many others live as if in paradise
we still dream of a good potato crop, are afraid of drought and of crops
soaking. As they say, no need to comment…
One cannot but agree with Solomon the Wise, the Tsar of Israel, who said
as far back as in 960B.C.,'Whatever was, that will be, whatever happened,
that will happen, and there is nothing new under the sun.' And further,
'Stupidity occupies high ranks, while the worthy ones are below.' This
is true wisdom! No wonder he was called Solomon the Wise. One can add
nothing more.
The nation might be wise in behaving like this and having nothing against
this existence and the life. Judging by the above mentioned Solomon's
wisdom, the nation, I am sure, lives exactly according to 'whatever was,
that will be, whatever happened, that will happen', even without being
unaware of doing so. For the time being, our nation lives proceeding from
this wisdom. Making no attempts to extend Solomon as it is impossible
to do, we could still try to find some loophole concerning the bad things
in order to eliminate them.
The experience of our development is deplorable one. Why not resort to
the experience of other countries and try to adopt the best things which
could grow on our soil? Say, we may be guided by the experience of the
state of Israel that was once ruled by Tsar Solomon. I have already mentioned
the droughts we are endlessly haunted by which bring inevitable crop failure.
So, everyone knows what latitudes Israel is situated in, yet, there is
no crisis of agricultural output, rather quite the contrary is true. Management
of agriculture there shakes our imagination, irrigation of lands and even
separate plants, in particular. Here its majesty the computer comes to
men's help. The agriculture is highly computerized. Now compare the state
of the material and technical basis of our agriculture with those of Israel,
the USA, Germany and Sweden, and then you are going to have answers to
all the sore questions. It is not some short period we have fallen behind
but forever.
Why do so huge expenses bring such a depressing effect? I think we should
dwell on the triad that is no mystery to anyone, i.e. business organization
with management as its pivot, material and technical basis, as well as
personnel. If these three components met global requirements by at least
a quarter, we would live in another dimension.
Giving mention of a peasant homestead above, we implied the rudimentary
state of private property. The term was not used in the Soviet Union,
of course. Yes, rather! Bolsheviks and the Soviet power fought with private
property to the bitter end, so God forbid to say about it aloud, not to
mention even thinking about it.
Nevertheless, the small light of private property flickered. People said
'my house', 'my yard', 'my garden', and so on. All this had its results,
as private sector gave the country about 50 per cent of meat, more than
half of milk, vegetables, fruit, etc. Instead of supporting the private
owner, the state has carried the situation to an absurdity, as today the
figure amounts to a bit more than 10 per cent and it tends to decline.
Compared to the late 1960s of XX century modern peasants are just poor
men, which is neither an exaggeration nor distortion, but just a historic
fact. They have their own perception of themselves and their place in
the world. Their dominant feature is slave psychology of all and sundry.
The psychology was instilled into their consciousness by the gloomy slave
life. They do not speak about the future, as a rule. They remember the
past and find something bright and joyful about it, so that their eyes
glow with life and kindness. They miss so much the life in the past when
everything used to be better than today. They say in post-war time their
life was hard, they were happy to have a piece of bread for a meal but
nevertheless their life was joyous. On summer evenings here and there
in the village, the sound of an accordion was heard and songs touching
the soul and the heart sounded. Dances on the bridge are particularly
memorable to me. In the middle of the village there was a small rivulet
with a bridge over it. In the evenings the youth gathered there. An accordion
sounded till morning and young people danced and sang songs. Splashes
could be heard from below as fish must have danced, too… Calm and warm
summer evenings, the smell of grass, a peculiar smell of water, and Man
was in the middle of this almost primordial beauty. All things merged
together in a harmonious way, everything lived the life predestined by
the Lord…
I have reproduced just a fragment of the village idyll, but it contains
a whole world in itself, a world of memories, of emotional experience,
of the feeling of great pity for something gone away never to return,
lost forever.
One can hear no songs, see no dances and joy in the village today. A wedding
is a rare occasion which turns into a mass drunken feast. Unfortunately,
good things remained in the past. It was not a long time ago, just in
the second half of the past century, that people lived much better, though
they worked from morning till night, as they always did in the village.
Village life was always characterized by hard, backbreaking, and what
is most important, practically free labor. In 1950s people had already
rebuilt the village after the war devastation; the youth who could not
leave the village as they had no passports had already grew up. There
were enough hands, new houses were built and a lot of young families appeared.
Peasants who did not have any passports could not leave the kolkhoz; the
same was in serfdom time when after the notorious St. George's Day peasants
could not leave for another landowner. To leave the village and get fixed
up in a job in the town (which was practically impossible without a passport,
by the way) or to go to study there one had to obtain a certificate from
the kolkhoz saying that the board did not object… Such certificates were
always given freely to orphans whose fathers were killed at the front
or in the partisan detachment. Those who were repressed guiltlessly still
remained enemies. People preferred not to remember about them at all.
It seemed these people had never existed. They vanished in obscurity,
defamed, disgraced, and deprived of their lives for nothing at all…
In 1966 work-days for work in the kolkhoz were abolished and money wage
was introduced. Work-day is a conventional wage-rate determined according
to some incomprehensible output rates for some work or another. It was
introduced when kolkhozes were set up. There were strictly definite rates
for any work. One work-day, for example, meant it was necessary to mow
0.45 hectare of grass, while you had to mow 0.48 hectare of meadow grass
and 0.4 hectare of top grass; a person had to cut 0.3 hectare of rye,
or to load with a pitchfork, to bring to the field and to unload 4 tons
of manure to earn a work-day. In a day one could earn either 1.5 or even
2 work-days or 0.3-0.5 work-days.
In late autumn, the harvest gathered and calculated, obligatory State
Deliveries handed over and results of kolkhoz' economic performance known,
the general meeting of collective farmers or the meeting of the board
determined how much people had to be paid for work-days. The year being
productive, one could expect to receive 0.3-0.4 kilos of rye, 1-1.5 kilos
of potatoes, 1-1.5 rubles (after 1961it was 5-10 kopeks) per work-day,
though frequently they received much less… Then a peasant would bring
to his homestead a cart loaded with potatoes and several sacks of grain,
which was the result of his work during the year.
Team-leaders and field-team leaders who worked like everyone else did
and received a small bonus for combining jobs, as well as chairmen of
kolkhozes' boards, were also due to be given a definite number of work-days,
though the margin between this number and that of other collective farmers'
was negligible. I remember my father, chairman of the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya
Belorussia', just like other kolkhoz heads in the district, was given
500 work-days per year, though the reprimands, reproofs and surcharges
he received were more numerous. An honest and hard-working person could
earn the same number of work-days or even more.
Now, after he received this scanty pay for the work in kolkhoz during
the year, the peasant had to pay taxes in the first place, then to buy
the indispensable foodstuffs and other things - salt, sugar, matches and
kerosene, as well as to buy clothes and footwear and to fit his children
out for school… Boots cost 100-150 rubles, while a quilted coat which
was indispensable for the peasant cost more than a hundred. A cow cost
three or four thousand rubles though soon after the denomination in 1961
its cost amounted to seven or eight hundred rubles. One can be only filled
with wonder how peasants could survive in such conditions. As we can see,
living conditions in the village used to be and still remain much worse
than before the revolution, as they worked practically free but had to
pay huge taxes. He had to pay for a cow and every hen, for fruit-trees
in the garden and for his personal plot (of thirty hundredth part per
family on average). The skin of a pig that was grown up and slaughtered
had to be peeled and handed over to the state, too; even ashes from stoves
were gathered by women for kolkhoz fields in the prescribed manner. The
extortionate taxes were mostly abolished in 1953 after the death of Stalin
when until January 1955 the state government was headed by Georgiy Malenkov.
It was not his merit, though; the time dictated to take this step, but
it was exactly this timeserver who was endlessly thanked by collective
farmers for doing so long afterwards. To a certain extent, the market
in every small town and district centre that worked on Sundays came to
help. They carried from villages and sold there cabbage, apples, meat,
milk, fat and beans dirt-cheap, to gain at least a small sum of money
in order to pay taxes and buy some clothes and footwear. This was the
way the village lived in post-war time. Perhaps life became better in
the course of time, yet only insignificantly.
I think it is no wonder the word 'krestyanin' (peasant) comes from the
word 'krest' (cross), they are related words. Soon after the parson in
the church gives a small cheap cross to the infant, the latter will go
on bearing his heavy cross, having rough times and suffering humiliation,
throughout his life until he goes to his resting place under a grave cross
at the grave-yard… Such is peasant life, with its everlasting work, very
few bright days and no gleam of hope in the future. Neither a serf nor
a collective farmer had any future, though collective farmers used to
feed the whole country, as many homesteads delivered to the state about
500 kilos of pork, almost the same amount of beef, thousands of eggs and
tons of milk during the year.
Average productivity of crops in the republic amounted to 20-25 centners
or, when the year was good, to 30 centners per hectare. Average potato
productivity amounted to 200 or more centners per hectare. Advanced kolkhozes
whose number increased year after a year, including my native Zhitkovichi
district and Turov land in particular, with its fertile lands and hard-working
and experienced grain-growers, had crop capacity of about 100 centners
per hectare. Nina Melnikova, the leading agronomist of the kolkhoz 'Pobeda',
even organized the republican club'Harvest-100' where she advocated the
experience of growing 100-centner yield widely. Still, as far back as
20 or 30 years, during the virgin lands epic, they glorified the crop
of only 100 poods per hectare.
As we can see, the productivity of agriculture, though it was significantly
behind the results being obtained in the West for a long time already
without much effort (which is also a sign of progress) was going up as
there were foundations laid down. Then all this went to hell and things
in the economic sphere, including agricultural sector as its part, changed
drastically so that our previous achievements, though relative when compared
with foreign countries, turned into failures, steady decline and sharp
collapse? While in 1990 the share of agriculture in the gross domestic
product of the republic amounted to 22.9%, then in 2002 it amounted to
only about 10%. Today such agricultural enterprises as kolkhozes and sovkhozes
run to 2400, while enterprises with new forms of management like farms
and so on amount to about 2250. The number of the latter in 1995 was greater,
though, they ran to 3030. The reason is many farmers ruin themselves and
give up this unprofitable business, as they can't endure complicated conditions
of work and tax burden. At present such farms have very little land in
their temporary possession - only 93.2 thousand hectares - but they produce
10.7% of crops, 38.8% of milk to the sum total 1721 million rubles, while
the rest of agricultural enterprises produce amounts to 2643 million rubles.
The population and farms produce over 40% of the country's agricultural
produce as against 25% in 1990. Today 64.5% of agricultural enterprises
in our country are unprofitable which 10% more as against 2002 is.
Labor productivity in agriculture was dropping year after a year at the
end of XX century. In 2001 as against 1990 crop yield went down from 29.4
to 19.8 centners per hectare, while the croppage dropped from 7040 thousand
tons to 5150 thousand tons (in 1999 the figure amounted to only 3645 thousand
tons). At the same time, we should take into account that in recent years
the country's population has become almost fully self-sufficient as far
as potatoes and vegetables are concerned. The private sector, with only
a sixth of arable land at its disposal, produces 80 per cent of vegetables,
almost 100 per cent of fruit and berries, more than 65 per cent of milk,
over 50 per cent of meat and more that 45 per cent of eggs.
Now let's have a look at the comparative data concerning the produce of
the most vital types of food in 2001 as against 1990. They produced 260.2
thousand tons of meat, including first category variety meat as against
900 thousand tons, sausage goods amounted to 216 and 167.8 thousand tons
respectively, the amount of whole-milk produce was 1776.3 thousand tons
as against 882.2 thousand tons, animal oil - 159 and 62.0 respectively,
vegetable oil output ran to 26.4 and 14.1 respectively, bread and bakery
goods amounted to 1583 thousand tons as against 628.5 thousand tons, while
the amount of macaroni foods was 60 thousand tons to 10.8 thousand tons.
In recent years land fertility has deteriorated significantly due to scanty
fertilizer application. As is generally known, the basic supplier of organics
is livestock sector. In the last five years alone, about 600 thousand
heads of cattle, i.e. every sixth of those that were grown at the beginning
of 1995, 92 thousand pigs, 28 thousand sheep and 39 thousand horses, i.e.
every fourth animal, have disappeared from farms. The remaining livestock
population did not receive enough fodder. In some years, though weather
conditions were favorable, they stock only a bit more than a half of the
required amount of fodder.
Agriculture receives less and less mineral fertilizers, too, while many
farms are given none at all. Organic fertilizers are also scarce as farms
have only 60 or 65 per cent of the amount required. In 1990 they applied
1510 thousand tons of organics, while in 2000 the amount was only 658
thousand tons. Phosphoric fertilizers which are not produced in the republic
are applied only a little, only a fourth of the amount used before.
Organic fertilizers application on the fields of the country has been
reduced by two thirds. Desperate shortage of farming machines and fuel
supply stoppage resulted in the spring sowing optimal time breach. The
finished off combines 'Don' and 'Niva', that should have been turned into
scrap metal a long time ago, scatter about a fourth of the crop gathered.
One more reason for the regular increase in the prices for food is sharp
and persistent growth of the price of petrol.
There are reasons for everything. They are more than necessary to explain
things happening in the agricultural sector, as well; the main one being
is that kolkhozes in their current form have outlived their usefulness.
Nevertheless, there are neither means nor financial support to promote
another form of land management. The powers that be do not have any wish
to change anything about the system, either.
What about the problem of workforce in the village? My native village
Rudna, as well as other Polesye villages, is a kind of mirror of the demographic
situation in villages. In 1979 the rural sector of the republic amounted
to 4 million 298 thousand people, while the 1999 population census result
was 3 million 83 thousand people, i.e. the rural population decreased
by 28 per cent for the period of twenty years. Naturally, the number of
Belarusian population today is even less. In 2003 alone the country's
population decreased by almost 30 thousand. The number of rural centers
of population have declined by more than a thousand in the past ten years
and amounts to 23.5 thousand now. Eight thousand of them have a population
of less than 25 people. True, the number of large villages with a population
of over two thousand people each has increased, but these villages are
still few, there are only about a hundred of them.
The country' population is ageing in a steadfast way. The number of people
who are 60 and over has exceeded 21per cent, while according to the World
Health Organization the nation is called ageing if the figure reaches
7per cent. The scientists consider the rural population of Belarus is
going to decrease by about a million people in the next few decades.
Things are even more oppressive as far as population groups are concerned.
In 1979 there were 2 million 184 thousand of able-bodied village dwellers
while now there are only less than a million and a half of them, with
less than half of these people being employed directly in farm production.
About 700 thousand people work in this industry and their number is expected
to decline twice in ten years due to the problems agriculture faces and
the extremely poor living conditions. Due to the social conditions our
village is no less than100 years behind developed countries. Old men and
women still carry water for their needs, e.g. to water the kitchen garden
and the cattle, in buckets. Bath is a luxury in most villages. The standard
of peasant dwelling corresponds to that of XIX century one while the standard
of livestock keeping places has fallen even lower. Waste waters soak into
draw-wells from dwellings, cattle keeping places and toilets, which was
inconceivable when our forefathers lived.
Is there at least any need to comment? Everything is apparent to the naked
eye. The farming industry crisis is obvious. Should we look for the reasons
for the umpteenth time? Enough of this! The only reason is we are unable
to manage. We should admit the fact and stop appealing to Mother Nature.
It is impossible to dramatically change the situation for the better within
the next few years as we have no necessary means.
In our opinion, there is one more factor which is of no small importance.
As opposed to the present day, at least several decades ago our people
had confidence in the future. A serious motivating factor of this confidence
was, undoubtedly, the victory in the most terrible war that world history
ever knew. People thought as long as they had gained a victory over the
cannibal like Hitler, all the rest would be a child's play and they would
survive everything.
The ideological backroom was making its everyday concoction pushing itself
to the limit and it must be admitted it succeeded in doing so. It could
not be the other way round, as Bolshevist ideology was violently implanted
in the mind of people. Almost 200 million people were violated by the
ideology; the violence lasted for almost 75 years in the USSR. Eventually,
everything collapsed - dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e. dictatorship
of violence, as well as its ideology.
There is hardly anyone today who is likely to help poor peasants, but
for themselves.
Thus, we have entered XXI century with more than 2 million people in our
country brought to an extremely desperate state and left to the mercy
of fate. There are practically no hands in the village, machinery is completely
worn-out, while pensions are scanty (by the way, every fourth dweller
in the republic is a pensioner). Thus, our only hope is the Lord…
CHAPTER VI
LAND, LOVE AND FAITH…
According to up-to-date standards, the distance from Rudna to Zhitkovichi
is not very long. It is only some 10 kilometers. When at school, I used
to walk the distance every day - in the morning I went to school and in
the evening I went back home. The village was part of the Zhitkovichi
Blessed Trinity church parish. An old wooden church stood on the outskirts
of the town, near the old graveyard. The church was built in 1842 by the
landowner Yelenskiy in the place of a more ancient church which had stood
there since 1581. Almost all villages of the current Zhitkovichi district
were part of its parish. Despite the church being the only one in the
area, it was visited by several tens of men only, due to the influence
of the Soviet propaganda. In 1879 the parish numbered over 2000 men as
the villages were populous then and peasant could not imagine their life
without going to church. A hundred years later, in 1979, though, when
the old wooden church was burned down, surely its parish was several times
less. It goes without saying that it was burned down due to someone's
malicious intent.
At the Soviet time such sacrilege was a surprise to no one. Practically
all churches in Belarus had a similar fate. For example, in Ludenevichi,
a village not far from Rudna, an ancient Mikhailovskaya church, built
as far back as 1775, was destroyed and pulled apart by tractors in 1963
(by the way, how can one account for the fact that both tractor drivers
died soon afterwards under different circumstances). The only operating
church in the district was only an ancient All Saints church in Turov.
Today there is a new brick church in Zhitkovichi built instead of the
destroyed old Blessed Trinity church. It is not very refined with respect
to its architecture but spacious and light. It is always populous there
on high days and holidays, just like it was in days gone by, which makes
one happy. I also made a contribution to building the church within my
powers. At the time Father Leonid, a pleasant, cultured and very educated
man was a priest at the Blessed Trinity church. Unfortunately, he died.
I always enter a church, no matter this one or any other, with awe at
heart, with a feeling of respect to shrines, with consciousness of both
my wickedness and the need of purgation…
My faith is deeply rooted; it was fostered in me by my forefathers and
was strengthened by knowledge of our history. It was exactly in our native
land, in ancient Turov, over 1000 years ago when the foundations of orthodoxy
were laid down by the saint Kiryll Turovskiy. On the boundary between
paganism and the new Christian faith he advocated, glorified and propagated
this faith in every way possible in his prayers, words and sermons.
Here everyone has God in his soul, in his heart and in his thoughts. Another
thing is whether He dominates man's conscience or is driven into the very
corner of one's soul, being deprived of His rights, and does not dare
to raise His voice… My ancestors were believers. Everyone knew my grandmother
Marpha Yakovlevna and my mother, may they rest in the Kingdom of Heaven,
to be extremely pious; they never refused God's gifts by either a word
or a deed. I have no doubts that the Lord granted me confidence in time
of spiritual hesitation and helped me to accomplish my lifework which
is to do good for people.
At the present stage of our development the role of church in moral and
spiritual respects, as well as in asserting Christian values, increases
significantly. A doctor treats the body while a priest treats the soul,
yet, they both equally serve life. Does the human being come to the earth
to be happy or to suffer? To be happy, beyond any doubt, though life is
inconceivable without sorrow, existence cannot be only sweet and serene.
The essence of life and personality is in overcoming hardships, which
is also a kind of happiness. Thus, one should not think that to bear your
cross means to suffer. Life in itself is the supreme gift and value, though
it is hard and thorny…
The faith in God, in kindness, in justice and in the triumph of philanthropy
always helped me, my friends and relatives to endure hardships, miseries
and grief that life presented us with not infrequently. It was always
easier to live with faith at heart. It is true that life is hard and unpredictable
and is thus full of gladness and happiness.
I remember my origins, my birthplace Polesye and my native village Rudna,
my mother and my father… However, 'remember' is not the exact word as
these thoughts and feelings are always at my heart, every hour and every
minute; they make my life and help me feel and breathe…
I have always been charmed by the miracle of unique earthly tints and
sounds, of landscapes and images that are not of human making and are
perfect in their harmonious unity. They are initially gifted to everyone
who enters the world. The gift is special as it is the gift of the Lord…
It is not only a source and a necessary condition of all flesh, man and
beast to exist on the Earth, but also an inexhaustible source of the human
soul existence itself.
I have lived for sixty years already. The further I move away from the
beginning and the more of the life path gifted to me by fate and God I
proceed along, the sharper I feel the grandeur and happiness of this invaluable
gift in the form of life, the inexhaustible power of spiritual attraction
and inner unity with my native land Polesye and my native village.
A lot of inspired words, pictorial canvases and thrilling melodies were
born by love to our native land, this small corner of the Earth where
one was born and grew up! Indeed, there is some link between human soul
and the space that gave you the first breath of air and breathed into
you the Spirit of life starting at this very moment. This link is above
human understanding. Though life is instable, changeable, and full of
contradictions and complicacy there always remains invariable and permanent
mutual attraction between the man and his birthplace.
Similar to an umbilical cord, this attraction connects the man with the
world, feeds his mind and soul by life-giving sap, defends and protects
his individuality. This marvelous link exceeds the limits of space and
time. It lives inside the man either consciously or unconsciously and
accompanies him since the moment he is born until he dies.
How can one call this mutual attraction that gives rise to amazingly tender
and gentle feelings, elevated words and tunes in a man's soul? I think
it is in the first place love as a special characteristic and a distinctive
feature of every living thing. Every grain of sand, every blade of grass,
every flower, petal, every drop of water or a dewdrop, a cloud of fog
and a breath of wind are suffused and filled with love; they breathe it
and radiate it in their every movement. The best and most beautiful things
in the world are created by love and in the name of love. This is an indisputable
truth, like the everyday sunrise or the yearly change of winter by spring
and of spring by summer…
Streams of love invisible to the human eye saturate the objective reality.
They feed it, warm and illuminate it by inner warmth and light. Alexei
Tolstoy wrote, 'There is nothing in the world that would not radiate love!'
As Saint Paul said in the First Epistle to Corinthians, 'Love endures
for a long time, it is merciful; love does not pride itself, it does not
behave outrageously, it does not get irritated, love does not scheme evil,
it does not rejoice at a lie but it rejoices at the truth, it shields
everything and believes everything, love endures everything'… This is
a bright and accurate life program of a Christian. Everything is done
with love and through love first of all…
Unfortunately, primarily at the beginning of the past century, with the
triumph of the new, communist ideology, the truth was ruined and condemned
to oblivion for a long time, if not for ever…
The birth of a human being and his first breath is simultaneously his
first touch of the greatest life-giving and still pure and chaste source
of life which is Love. The human being is the supreme outcome of love
itself. We do not know whether the first cry of a newly-born means a most
profound surprise due to earthly realization of Love. A special attachment
of a child to his mother might be due not only to their unity at the time
when the mother was pregnant with the child, but also to the initial absorption
into the space of Love.
A human being begins with Love. The maturing of his soul and mind, as
well as his growing up, progress under the conditions of natural spiritual
atmosphere saturated with Love. A human being breathes love like air,
though he does not notice it and is not aware of it. He does not see anything
important and significant about it. The man likes flowers and grass, the
field, the wood, birds and animals; he loves life itself and another human
being, so what? However, it might be exactly this simple earthly feeling
of love that spiritual search for the exalted ideal begins with. For me
the question has been decided definitely and in the affirmative. I do
not doubt that the sources of the most outstanding spiritual gains of
both a human being and humankind can be found in the sense of love light
emanated by any living being. The more a human being is filled with the
light, the deeper he plunges into the infinite space of Love and the more
grandiose and majestic are discoveries and achievements of his spirit…
I have not said anything yet about love for God. There are many theories
accounting for the origin of religion and faith. The point of view, according
to which religion was given rise to by people's fear of natural and social
elements, their ignorance and so on, is most common.
It goes without saying that negative emotional state was and is of importance
when keeping up religious feeling. I think, though, the sources of religion
are different and much deeper. Faith appears due to the intuitive detection
of the Love radiating focus that unites the diversity of the world into
a single whole. The collective familiarization with the dimension of Love
made the basis of the first spiritual discovery in human history. Its
essence consisted in the idea of inner triumph and supernatural interdependence
of a human being, a group, nature and cosmos.
Though the underlying identity base in the form of the idea of Love that
is still not realized, was concealed, it was present in the base at the
time already. As spirit was developing, the idea of Love crystallized
and was finally embodied in the supreme religious value saying 'God is
Love'. The Gospel of Luke says, 'God's Kingdom is inside you; it is your
wishes, your intentions and your motives…' 'Arrange a church in your heart,
drive all evil intentions out of it and you will enjoy utter bliss in
the world. May your heart be full of good intentions and everything would
be clear…' (Matthew's Gospel).
The main thing that Christ requires is pure intentions. Could everyone
today state that his intentions are pure?
Let's lay theoretical reflections aside. I gave them only to make you
understand what native land, love and faith mean in the life of a human
being who is endowed with soul and spirit. In my opinion, true religious
feeling begins with the feeling of awesome Love to earthly realizations
of life. The more human soul is filled with them, the stronger is both
the divine breath felt in it and the need to familiarize with it. Love
for God is a 'temple built up'. The base of the temple is love for Earth
while the input building material is love for native land, for its every
blade of grass, grain of sand, a flower, and a dewdrop, a beetle and a
spider, and, naturally, for one's neighbor, for a human being…
It seems to me one cannot talk about any deep religious feeling and faith
without this base. Outside it religion appears to be colossus with feet
of clay when any weak gust of wind makes it collapse and fall down. What
is religion in point of fact? According to its adherents, it is a link
between a human being and God or, in other words, it is love of a human
being and God, a link between them by means of mutual love. We can speak
about religion only when Alpha and Omega join at the throbbing, bright
and vigorous point which is Love. That means piety appears only when earthly
Love exceeds earthly space. St. Paul wrote to Corinthians, 'And now there
are these three - Faith, Hope and Love; but love is most important'…
Like water in the river, Love gets over the banks, exceeds their bounds,
rises and fulfills itself in God. Without touching the earthly dimension
of love and filling your soul with it in full, it is impossible to feel
Divine Love. A human being is primarily an earthly creature. His experience
of feelings and emotions, including cognition of Love, takes shape in
the process of life accomplishment. There is simply no other basis and
source to supply his soul and spirit.
However far the human spirit rises, whatever distant imaginary spheres
it hovers, this will always take shape of earthly accumulation rising
and hovering. In the case in question it is accumulation of earthly Love.
It is no wonder, therefore, that description of Paradise in the Bible
and the Koran are both a description of Earth carried to Heaven. The description
reflected notions about harmonious and absolute beauty of the Earth and
people who inhabit the space of absolute Love.
Thus, the basic religious principle saying 'God is Love' can be commented
on in the following way - Love is the spirit of life, to live means to
love, so God is Love for life, i.e. love for Earth in all displays of
earthly life or, in a more general interpretation, love for eternal Life.
It seems to be of extreme importance to draw attention of all people,
no matter whether they are atheists or believers, to the fact. Why does
humankind find itself on the edge of an abyss and has come close to not
only self-annihilation but also to the murder of life? Why do those people
who consider themselves to be pious, who say prayers, perform religious
actions and go to church, take an active part in the mass process of murder
of life and of poisoning its origins. One of the answers to the complicated
question might be lack in earthly dimension of Love.
Its source, which is love for the earth and a person's native land, is
covered with the thick layer of indifference and nonchalance. As a result,
today we have to be busy with excavations of the Temple of Love which
results from spiritual, rather than social urbanization. We build the
world around us in our own image. Ferroconcrete cities are an embodiment
of ferroconcrete souls, machine intelligence, computers and the internet
are personification of the soulless spirit, while deadly weapon is the
supreme embodiment disappearance of Love seen as the spirit of life.
The spirit which lost its ability to feed from the source of Love for
the earth kills nature and simultaneously destroys both itself and God.
This villainous deed is committed daily. It has become a habitual and
everyday matter. The things we see on the TV screen, hear on the tape
and see in the internet are evil, violence and murder only…
We live in the atmosphere of dislike for life and, thus, dislike for God.
Human life loses its value against a background of mass terrorism against
the earth that remains unnoticed and is committed every minute. The terrorism
tortures and destroys Life as it is. They think if it is possible to destroy
earth, why not kill a human being, too? This is an appalling philosophy.
It is no wonder that terrorism propagates inhuman relations in the atmosphere
of hatred when solving any issues. They drop bombs, shoot and slaughter
each other holding the Koran or the Bible in their hands.
The events of September 11, 2001 in the USA showed new ways of suicide
of humankind. Thousands of innocent victims strew the field of dislike
for God and Life. If the terrorist attack itself was obvious and evident,
bright as a flash of lightning, the reverse action called retribution
is nothing but a form of hidden terrorism covered up by a thin veil of
demagogy, as the victims of requital operation carried out with the help
of destructive means again were children, women and old people who were
innocent of any crime. They became hostages of evil, just like those people
who were in the suicide planes. Were they victimized for some good causes,
in the name of Kindness, Love and Life? Of course they were not.
The seeds of death will not sprout into stems of Life. After the September
11 events the world became different. It seems to me it changes for the
worse, for the idea of legal and moral right for a retaliatory mortal
crime is striking root in collective consciousness quickly. If the idea
takes hold of the human mind one may say with certainty that the end of
earthly life is not far off. It is as near as never before.
We have every reason to believe, though, that the tragic outcome could
be averted. We want to hope that innocent people's death was not vain.
Like a universal peal, it should awaken Love in the souls of people still
living and direct their minds at creation and embellishment of earthly
Life. May those who have soul and heart hear this peal …
I owe the very best human qualities I possess to my native land and its
people I feel the first gulp of bracing air of my motherland up till now.
Though I have been living in Minsk for almost 40 years, I still consider
myself to be a countryman as far as my perception of the world is concerned.
I think it is due to the love for my birthplace that took roots deep in
my heart. This love made my mind think about life, the world around and
the human being and, like a good teacher, it lit a divine candle in my
soul without my noticing…
I think everyone has his own individual and unique path to God. I walked
along the path by myself, making my way through thorns and spiritual contradictions.
When surveying the past now I can assert that beauty, harmony, good and
Love radiated by the world around were and still remain my best advisers
and preachers, my priests and teachers.
I grew up in the family where the father was a confirmed communist and
atheist. Nobody at home spoke about religion, God and the meaning of life.
The questions discussed were mainly connected with work, common everyday
concerns and survival.
I think the only thing that reminded us, children, about God was religious
holidays like Christmas and Easter. They were seen as unusual days for
two reasons. Tasty food like pies, Easter eggs, meat, sausage and simple
sweetsá was always served up, so one could arrange a real feast for the
stomach. Despite our father being a confirmed atheist, there was a sort
of enthusiastic and exalted mood in the family on such days. In the second
place, these holidays differed from others, e.g. May 1, the October revolution
or the Constitution day, because they were not in the calendar. Though
celebrated widely and everywhere, they were still secret and concealed.
What did we know about these holy days? We knew practically nothing. If
Christmas was at least somehow associated with the birth of Jesus Christ,
then the meaning of Easter was obscure to both children and grown-ups.
Most village dwellers had little in common with religious doctrine, dogmatism
and cult. It was not typical of them to demonstrate outer piety. There
is no doubt, though, that they always had inner religious principle in
their souls, which resulted from traditions that were more stable and
durable under rural life conditions. Harassing peasant labor, continual
poverty, insecurity and many other things also played their role. It was
hardly possible to survive and maintain human dignity under the circumstances
without God's support. Here religion really played the role of a crutch
that supported the wounded and sick soul. It was also a hope and a pain
reliever like morphine or opium taken in low therapeutic doses.
Being unaware of differences, e.g., between orthodoxy and Catholicism,
they believed in general - in God, Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin, saints.
They revered them and asked for better life in prayers. In their thoughts
there was also a deeper religious feeling, it was a special state of mind
caused by immediate closeness, participation and communion with harmony,
kindness and Love, as if spilled in morning fog, covering meadows and
fields with a scud, in silver dewdrops decorating thin stems of grass,
in the fluffy veil of snow and in the boundless starry sky…
All this was perceived ingenuously, literally, not only with eyes and
ears, but also by heart and by soul; as a result the greatest mystery
happened, i.e. communication without any words, a spiritual link both
with divine spark and essence of the World.
I remember the state of my boyish soul in the small hours or at haymaking
time and I feel now the ringing quiet of the night, the silence of the
wood and the quiet flow of water… I remember my mother who went to work
on a farm at four in the morning and, coming back home late at night,
tired and exhausted, she told that the morning was wonderful and beautiful.
Her eyes had a marvelous glitter and delight mixed with sorrow and tiredness…
We lived in the country, were saturated with its sap throughout and felt
to be its inalienable flesh and blood. The very our connection with the
Earth helped form the qualities they try to cultivate today through ecological
education and upbringing. Nobody brought home to us that we should love
the Earth and take care of it. We always knew, though, that the nature
around lives and breathes and that we should treat it with care and with
love, due to the principle 'do not harm'.
When I boy, wandering along fields, meadows and forests, I saw pits and
dints left since wartime. I thought them to be wounds of a living organism
and felt the pain of the earth. The same happens to me now, though the
wounds of the earth are overgrown with grass and cicatrized. I cannot
remain indifferent watching bomb explosions on TV, no matter whatever
corner of the earth it takes place. I feel the earth moan with pain and
writhe in convulsion.
Sometimes I doubt whether we are really inhabitants of the earth. Could
we be heartless space aliens who came to earth to destroy it? For a child
cannot and should not torture and kill his mother as it runs counter to
the laws of Life, both human and divine…
Both my motherland and my mother gave me life. They are the most holy
and sacred in every person's life. The faith in God begins with worshiping
the cult of Mother, the image where earthly and heavenly, human and divine
merge together. Our duty is to raise the image high to the skies up to
the divine, while the divine should be brought to the level of the earthly.
The boundary between the earthly and the celestial might become more transparent
then and the gap between them will disappear, while religion as a spiritual
sphere called to join the two worlds through love will realize its predestination.
It must be high time to turn our eyes on the sacred image of the earth.
We have common God, just like common sun, moon, stars and air. We all
live in one great universe. We are similar as we have a soul and are able
to reason, ponder and take action.
The only thing we have to do is to concentrate collective efforts of mind
on bringing up love for the earth that will protect all of us and will
never betray us. We should also bring up love that is going to unite the
wholesome delight in the beauties and a most profound responsibility for
the present and the future of the earth. The love will fill our actions
and deeds with sense. It will overcome terrestrial attraction and reach
elevated divine heights, thus reviving in human souls faith as a great
connecting principle of Life…
CHAPTER VII
LAND AS A BREADWINNER
It might have been a long time ago, at the dawn of agriculture, that somebody
called land mother and breadwinner… This is a clever and good comparison.
Thus, Karl Marx did not discover anything new, in point of fact, but only
stated the fact when he wrote, 'Land is a great laboratory, an arsenal
giving means of work, material for work, a place to settle and the basis
of the group.'
It was since the time when man gradually switched over from gathering
to agriculture that he lived off the land solely. It fed him, provided
clothes for him and watered him. It seemed quite natural that man had
to be master of the land, to protect it and to be worried about his breadwinner.
Even at the time agriculture was still slash-and-burn, i.e. some plots
of land were cleared of the wood and they were used for several years
until their natural fertility ran out. Then they were left, and the human
being with a stone axe moved to another plot of land where he also took
care of it applying a lot of labor, as he had to cut the forest, to stub
studs and to burn the wood. In order to burn down a dessiatina of land
properly, one had to work hard for no less than 50 days. It was very hard
work to plough new soil with the help of a primitive spade or a wooden
plough later, to sow and take in the harvest on time …
I sometimes ask myself a question what was in the place of my native village
Rudna many centuries ago. Of course there was a forest, may be it was
a centuries-old pine forest. On the banks of the forest river Naut, that
is much shallower and narrower today, people used to find deposits of
low-quality swamp ore which was used to smelt off-grade iron in blast
furnaces. This is how the toponym Rudna came to exist (Rudna comes from
'ruda' which stands for 'ore'). Iron alone, even swamped for other goods
in the nearby big trade town Turov was not enough to survive. It goes
without saying, the first settlers in the area also used to cut the forest
and clear fields fit for growing rye or turnip, or perhaps spelt and millet.
No wonder the villages neighboring Rudna are called Polyanka, Pasyeka,
Vodopoylo… As time passed, the forest ceded more of its area to agricultural
land which, as they used to write before, turned into wide kolkhoz fields
with the lapse of time. We are going to find out later what turned out
of it and how the new lord of nature, i.e. the Soviet official and the
collective farmer who was denied his rights, managed them…
Centuries passed. In the course of time many changes took place in the
world, the world itself changed but there was a rule that remained indisputable.
The rule said one should take care of the land as much as of his own health.
Only then you may expect to receive something in return which is the basis
for your own well-being. Land should have the master. A serf who worked
off corvee for many centuries, a prototype of the present-day collective
farmer, could not be one. No wonder landowners often complained at the
time (just like present-day chairmen of kolkhozes) that peasant work their
plots of land extremely well but they make a pig's ear out of working
their landowner's land, though the plough they used was the same. The
landowner couldn't make a good master, either, as he did not work on the
land directly, he didn't shed his sweat on it, he frequently lived far
away from it, in a town, at the best he could live in a manor house in
some picturesque place on an eminence, while the farm was managed by a
steward, who was usually a practical German.
Peasants gradually got into larger bondage. In 1581 they were forbidden
to leave for another landowner on St. George's day, November 26 ('Here's
a fine how d'ye do'). Bond slavery became widespread. The policy of autocracy
became tougher during the reign of Peter the Great. In 1724 peasants were
forbidden to go off trading without their landowner's consent. In 1730
they were forbidden to have real property and later to deal in farming
and contracts. Soon landowners were given the right to condemn peasants
to Siberia or to penal servitude. It stood to reason peasants could be
sold like cattle or be exchanged for borzoi and so on…
A lease holder, like, e.g. Y. Kupala's father Dominik Lutsevich could
not make a true master, too, as he was not a proprietor but only a timeserver.
After several years at one place where he poured somebody else's land
with his sweat and gave a half, a third or a fourth of the crop to the
proprietor of the land under the contract, he had to leave the place and
move on to another owner of the land. Sometimes poor peasants of Jewish
origin who had to live beyond the Pale of Settlement became leaseholders
in order not to die of hunger. How could a leaseholder work on somebody
else's land without any love for it and respect to it? This kind of management
which was mere land exploitation, in fact, was of benefit to neither the
land itself nor the ploughman. The only one who benefitted from it was
the proprietor of the land as he was paid invariable money rent for the
land. Thus, he did not work himself but gained profit. As is known, forced
slave labor was never productive. Moreover, it caused disintegration of
empires or of whole civilizations sooner or later.
Things went on this way for a long time. However much many people today
disapprove of revolutionary orthodox V.I. Lenin, one can single out an
extremely essential, important and truly revolutionary deed in his activity,
i.e. the fact he gave land to the one who worked on it directly, namely
to the peasant. Though the idea did not belong straight to him, as he
plagiarized it, just like many others, from the program of socialist revolutionaries,
it was a done deal. The land finally had its manager! Lenin went even
further. He acted in a more decisive and revolutionary way than the celebrated
liberator Tsar Alexander II with his notorious abolition of serfdom when
a lot of reservations and deviations were made which resulted in increased
enslavement of a peasant in the form of redemption, mortgage and communal
proprietorship… In Buykovichi, in the estate 'Belaya Luzha', not far from
Rudna, Romaniya Levandovskaya, an agrarian, retained over 1.5 thousand
dessiatinas of land and even bought a hundred or two dessiatinas more,
taking advantage of the fact peasants were in strained circumstances.
Besides, she opened a distillery which brought in sizeable return; in
1899, e.g., it made produce to the sum of over 16 thousand rubles, while
15 workers were paid only about 3 thousand rubles, i.e. 15 rubles a month
on average. One can give a lot of examples of the kind as far as Belarus
called North-West territory at the time, is concerned. As a result of
abolition of serfdom in 1861 landowners and noblemen owned 71.5 million
dessiatinas of land, while peasants owned only 33.7 million dessiatinas.
The same held good for Zhitkovichi volost where in 1886 landowners had
68.5 thousand dessiatinas of land, while village communities had 16.2
thousand in their possession. Moreover, peasants had to redeem this land
by taking a loan from Land bank for 50 years. The first figure tended
to increase continually, while the second had a trend to decline. Nevertheless,
even these measures, half-hearted and far from being radical, were the
first symptoms and the beginning of reforms in the most patriarchal and
conservative sphere of the economy, namely, in agriculture.
Fighting everyday problems and troubles, facing gloomy life and the struggle
for survival in the galloping world, we have neither time nor a wish to
stop, glance back and think though it is high time to do so. It does not
occur to most of us that our land feeding us is in grave danger. We are
unaware that it is people themselves who drove the land into this state.
We are far from idealizing the state of land on the eve of the October
coup in 1917, yet, it should be noted that the land of the Russian empire
gave so much corn that it could be called the granary of Europe. Russia
ranked first in the Old World as far as export of grain was concerned.
Russia occupied the same positions concerning flax, hemp and fat. Land
of the Russian empire fed foreigners.
Things changed for the worse after the October revolution. Famine became
a concomitant of the population in the Soviet country. In the late 1920s
and the early 1930s, for example, even such centuries-old breadbaskets
as Ukraine and Povolzhye starved. Cases of cannibalism were not infrequent
at the time.
Bolshevist leaders had just one wish, namely, to do everything the other
way round, different from tsarist Russia, i.e. the valuable experience
that had been accumulated was condemned to oblivion and rooted out. This
went on year after a year, decade after a decade. The pernicious policy
of the kind couldn't but lead to a catastrophe in the sphere of supply
of the population with agricultural products. Literally at all stages
of the Soviet state development they were short of grain and bread. They
used to deliver it from everywhere, even from Canada. At the same time
other European countries produced grain to their heart's content and,
undoubtedly, they didn't need any more of it. Unfortunately, we have been
unable to achieve anything as far as other spheres dealing with satisfying
needs of the population are concerned. Just have a look at our household
appliances, produce of clothes, footwear, and motor transport and so on.
We seem to live on another planet. It is extremely painful that we play
the role of a global laughingstock. Frankly speaking, people are tired
of the state of affairs. The way out is known to all sensible people but
it turns out that common sense is not enough. We should get back to the
land, though, as we are going to perish at all if we do not cultivate
it.
When we narrate about the land as a breadwinner I think we should take
my native village Rudna as an example, as it undoubtedly has a lot in
common with other, similar villages, though there are differences, too.
We are going to speak about both.
It should be noted that the village and rural population on the whole
always struggled for life and survival. It seemed that somebody had accurately
calculated how much a peasant needs to survive. There was no saying of
any surplus. One could rather speak about shortage. Let's take as an example
those small plots of land, the so-called 'one hundred square meters',
which were allotted to village dwellers. They were small, as a rule. I
remember we were given 15 hundred square meters first and later it was
25. One had to plant potatoes, to sow carrots, cabbage and beetroot, as
well as to grow some fruit trees on the area… Such practices of giving
small plots can't be called other than humiliation of people. Potatoes
were traditionally seen not even as the 'second bread', but as the most
important of the foodstuffs, and not only for people. They used potatoes
to feed practically all of their livestock. One can just imagine what
distress it was for the family when these hundred square meters soaked
when the summer was rainy or dried out when it was hot. A tragedy unfolded
before everyone's very eyes as potatoes could not be substituted for any
other product, because they simply had nothing to replace it with. It
was also problematic to borrow from someone who had good potato crop,
but still a sack or two could be borrowed from one person, the same number
of sacks could be borrowed from another, with the promise to return, of
course. One could not buy the missing foodstuffs as nobody had any money.
In the village they get up very early, it is at 4 a.m. in summer. They
manage the house and make breakfast. I remember the same picture being
always repeated. Fire was blazing in the stove and my mother was cooking
simple food while the kolkhoz team leader knocked at the window and at
the door and warned severely she had to turn up for work on time. It was
out of the question to miss work. If you were late, it was reckoned when
they divided haymaking plots or gave horses to help harvest potatoes.
People broke their backs on the kolkhoz field from morning till night.
The labor was extremely hard as everything was done manually. In 1950s
they cut crops sewn on kolkhoz fields manually. Practically all females
in the village, young and old alike went out to stubble. The one who has
never taken part in the struggle for the crop of the kind will be unable
to imagine this. You just have to go through it yourself. I think those
who escaped this lot are lucky. Thus, one had to cut rye, wheat and oats
very low. You can just imagine how a reaper felt during the day. Iron
and steel mechanisms of farming machines broke down but back, legs and
the head of the long-suffering village woman did not. The woman did not
groan, cry or go off into hysterics as she understood that no one was
going to do the work for her. It is astonishing that at harvest time a
collective farmer cut more than half a hectare of rye by such simple instrument
as a sickle. One can only guess what she thought or dreamed about every
minute and every hour as nobody is going to say this. Sometimes a reaper
would lose her temper and curse her lot, but nothing more than that, as
it was impossible to leave the field. There was also no one to complain
about terrible pains in the small of the back and dizziness. One had to
cut several hundred square meters a day.
One cannot but remember the words of the former USSR vice-president and
member of the State Emergency Committee (a short-lived junta in the 1991
coup attempt in the USSR) G. Yanayev who used to repeat the words of the
famous hero of Sholokhov's work, 'I will go on ploughing, I will plough
at the light of the lantern and I will plough two dessiatinas and a quarter.'
Good for you, Yanayev! I wonder if he knew how to put on a horse collar
or what should be put on a bull's neck to hitch the cart or a plough to
it. Such great ploughmen like Yanayev, the combine operator assistant
Michael Gorbachev, as well as komsomol and later on party functionaries
did not sow, grow and harvest. What they did was to betray their great
country and its people. The most terrible thing is they betrayed the sacred
land. I am sure the land will not take them and they will not rest in
peace…
I want to direct your attention to one more fact. Women worked barefoot
at the stubble-field, as a rule, so their feet were always injured by
the stubble till they bled. Their hands often suffered from the sickle,
too, but no one cried with pain. It was all the same whether you cried
or not, as there was nobody to help. They even did not have a simple first-aid
kit, not to mention iodine. A piece of cloth and a leaf of plantain were
the only medical aid, in fact.
Almost half a century has passed since the time, but the picture of the
village stubble is still before my very eyes. I recall peasant reapers,
their tired faces wet with sweat and the simple food they took out of
linen bags or out of kerchiefs tied in small bundles… This picture is
close and dear to me and I cannot but cry now.
Indeed, there is every reason to cry. First of all, most of those reapers
are no more. My mother who was my last joy and comfort also went to the
next world. I am constantly haunted by the question at what cost these
women held a whole superpower, fed, watered and dressed it. I wonder what
they got in return. They had only slave gloomy life without any holidays,
health resorts, rest homes, medical care and even without any village
bath. A sane mind cannot contain all this. Things were like this, they
are now, if not worse, and what are they going to be like and whether
they are going to be at all is a big issue.
A generation after a generation leaves, yet we are still waiting for better
times. They do not come still and I think it will be a long time before
they come. What I am certain of is they will not come in our lifetime.
The process of destruction of the Earth has gone too far; it will take
several decades or even a whole century to revive the Earth.
The hard rural labor did not boil down to the work in the stubble alone.
Haymaking time was no less hard. Everyone in the village is waiting for
haymaking time and is getting ready for it. Food is important at the time,
in the first turn. Such simple rural food like fat came to the foreground.
If a family lacked fat in their larder by mowing season it was a real
tragedy, for it was common knowledge that a mower could not manage a scythe
without eating fat. Of all spheres of human activity it is mowing that
consumes most calories, while boxing ranks second.
So, the majority of farmers had a certain amount of fat in store by haymaking
time. Fat that coupled with green leaves of onion and water from wells,
restored strength. They mowed grass at the kolkhoz hay land in the valleys
Obolonye, Vyunitsa and Chirgany. Each of the places was of amazing beauty,
but I liked Obolonye most, as it was a paradise, literally speaking. There
are no words to describe the beauty, one should see it with his own eyes.
Everything was pleasant to the eye, soul and heart. To begin with, the
grass here in Obolonye was the most beautiful in the world.
I still remember mighty oaks and whole oak-groves. I think they could
grow only on the soil of my beautiful land Polesye which is as mighty
and beautiful as the oaks themselves are. At least twenty people could
hide from torrid heat on a hot sunny day or to conceal themselves in heavy
rain so that no drop would fall on them under the top of a mighty oak
that was so big it took three grasps of both arms to measure it. The oak
also provided pigs, both wild and domestic, with dainty food, i.e. acorns.
Undoubtedly, the oak top and its leaves were a powerful filter that destroyed
inimical bacteria. Its roots also played a positive role as they helped
to protect soil. One can give a lot of other wonderful features of this
miracle of nature.
If Russia, say, is proud of its birch tree glorified in songs, then Belarusians
may rightfully pride themselves on the mighty, beautiful and unique oak,
a tree that can be found nowhere, neither in Asia or Africa. The one who
lifted his blood-stained hand against the tree will be punished by God,
as the oak was created by God as a decoration of our Earth and a help
to people. Thus, the tree is sacred and inviolable… I spent a lot of time
in the shadow of the oak and I thought much owing to its care of me. Nobody
and nothing could disturb my train of thought. I am grateful to it for
sending powerful biological current of the sky when our thoughts merged,
they were spiritual, pure and inspiring, and thus the supreme source accepted
them and determined the pure and pious state of our souls and actions.
Years later I realized what role the divine tree played in my life. I
have never harmed any trees since the time, as I consider them to be alive
and to be my friends. I find it impossible to cut or break off a branch.
I cannot take the life of a tree. The tree is a living thing. It cries
when wounded and makes a lot of efforts to heal the wounds and survive,
though not every tree succeeds in doing so. I shudder to see how people
hurt birch trees. They think they drink birch sap, but in fact they drink
the blood of birches. The sap is tears of the defenseless before the human
being who is the most sinful creature on Earth. The man committed and
goes on committing the gravest sin before God when he destroys unprotected
oaks, birches, rivers and lakes, in other words, everything that was gifted
by the Lord. Unreasonable people do not know what they do. The Day of
Judgment has already begun, and human beings will be judged by their father
God. They are not going to have any defenders because the sin they committed
is so grave that any defense will be ineffective and useless. It is even
no use to pray for forgiveness of people's sins as they are so grave.
There is no absolution of their deeds, both within space and time limits.
Nevertheless, the man should stop and ponder over his sins. He should
ask God for forgiveness. The Lord is merciful and magnanimous…
Anyway, let's get back to haying meadows and to people whose labor helps
to create conditions for life on the Earth.
I have first-hand knowledge of peasant work at haymaking field as I played
an honorable and indispensable role of a water carrier, i.e. I provided
mowers with potable water from an oak barrel. I would fill the barrel
with water from a village well and bring it to the swamp by a horse. Then
I would fill a twenty-liter can with the water and bring it to the mowers.
… The grass in Obolonye was high and thick. One needed strength, knack
and skill of handling a scythe, as well as stamina, the last probably
being the most important, in order to get the better of the grass. Several
tens of village males participated in mowing. They formed a human chain,
standing one after another, and an indescribable sight started. As a rule,
the beginning of mowing concurred with daybreak when the dew on the grass
was plentiful as it is much easier to mow when the grass is wet. Haymaking
was headed by Pavel Yukhnevich, a sinewy, bony and very enduring man,
a war veteran and a holder of an order. Other men followed him. The leader
set the pace which practically no one could sustain. It seemed to me all
the time that the one going behind would cut the heels of the one going
in front, but this never happened.
The already mentioned Pavel Yukhnevich held first place in mowing for
many years. I think his record which was more than ninety hundred square
meters, almost a hectare, has not been broken so far. The record is very
difficult to believe but it is true. Can we find a workaholic of the kind
in Belarus today? I dare to assert we can't.
In general, mowers had a very strict discipline at haymaking time. To
have booze was out of the question, nobody even breathed a word of it,
because everyone understood they should work wholeheartedly as long as
the weather was good. God forbid it would start raining, and then they
were going to have a lot of problems. Almost fifty years have passed since
the time, but the picture of haymaking has not been erased from my memory.
I often catch myself at the thought I would like to see and to participate
in haymaking, preferably with the same participants, but this is merely
wishful thinking. My heart is heavy because it went forever. I feel worried
when people of my generation recollect the hard post-war life and everything
they saw and experienced. Our children listen to us with surprise and
come to the conclusion this could hardly happen at all, but if it did
happen the reason was the time we lived in. When my daughter asks me if
I would like to go through everything that fell to my lot again I answer
without hesitation I would. I am grateful to the Lord who gave me exactly
this life. I do not know any other life and I do not want to have any
other. I wish only all those people whom I recollect were alive…
The struggle for hay or, if you please, for life, was not limited to the
work of mowers alone. After three or four days of sunny weather all grown-ups
and children in the village, young and old alike, everyone who could carry
tools like rakes, pitchforks and barrows got down to work. Someone noticed
to the point once that a summer day feeds the whole of the year. They
struggled for kolkhoz hay and they won, as a rule, as there was nowhere
to retreat. They worked fiercely and violently in order to rake hay and
to pile haycocks before it would start raining.
Haycocks, in their turn, were pulled by horses to a drier place where
haystacks were made. The valley/hole had extremely swampy places, so it
was impossible to use horses as they often fell into mud. They had to
use a barrow, then. They were two rather thick poles polished at the ends
by toil-hardened hands of peasants. A barrow was put under a haystack
and two men carried the hay. Haystacks were very big, as a rule; they
were difficult to carry, especially to the one who went behind, as he
could not see anything. He would often stumble over and fall down dropping
the barrow. He was cursed up hill and down dale, then. By the way, no
one took any offence for this; it was in the order of things. I experienced
this myself more than once. I always wanted to prove that I was strong
enough and I could carry heavy load on a par with grown-ups. Sometimes
the feats of the kind turned out badly as I had pain in the abdomen but
I had to bear it.
Despite it was hard to everyone, people had to bear. It is necessary to
stress it was not a one-time act of endurance. Peasant labor is very hard,
and a peasant endures the burden all his life as it is impossible to live
another way. If you don't plant and gather potatoes, cabbage and cucumbers,
and don't feed the cow, pigs, calves and hens you are doomed, you are
not going to survive, you will die. You have the same routine from day
to day, from year to year and all life long. People of other professions
should appreciate peasant labor. Instead they often use the word 'collective
farmer' in a scornful way meaning 'a country bumpkin, a rustic'. I think
most of us do not understand what we say and what meaning we put into
the word 'a collective farmer'. It seems we do not mean 'a breadwinner'
but we mean 'a dull, uneducated and uncivilized man'. The word always
grates on my ears, as they use it to insult the farmer …
These miserable people, peasants, have to suffer humiliation and insults
from many people, ranging from a kolkhoz team leader to officials of every
color. Blind fear was driven inside a farmer. He was afraid of everyone
and everything around - of God, of marsh subsoil, of a team leader and
of a policeman… His lot cannot be compared with anyone else's, save the
lot of a slave. In a word, they were born slaves, lived and died slaves.
People gave almost all of their strength and health to the kolkhoz, while
they had practically no time left for their homestead. I think if they
had not used child labor things with their farmland, livestock and poultry
would have been very bad. Grown-ups simply would not have time to cope
with the work both in kolkhoz and at their homestead.
They had a perennial problem of making hay for their cow. As a rule, they
were pressed for hay. The problem was especially acute in 1950s and the
early 1960s. My memory brings me back to exactly these distant years.
Frosts were relentless and there were snowstorms. As peasants say, in
such weather a good master will not turn his dog out of the house. Anyway,
indigence and lack in hay for the cow made people steal it; may God and
people forgive me for the word 'steal'. Thus, having gathered hay for
the kolkhoz herd in summer, many peasants didn't have time and were unable
to stack hay for their cows. This was typical of our family, in particular.
There raised a sharp question of what to do. The way out was to take fodder
from the kolkhoz hayrick, and they did so. My late mother and grandmother
Varvara went ten or fifteen kilometers to hayricks at the swamp late at
night to bring several tens kilos of hay. My mother used to tell me how
hard and scary it was. They laid 50 or 60 kilos of hay into a big linen
sackcloth, hoisted it onto their backs and went back home in bitter frost
to bring hay to the hungry cattle tired of waiting. This was the lot of
village women…
I do not know if there is a more apt name for these trips than name 'lifeline'
because it was one, indeed. My mother walked along it many times for many
years to save our cow from starvation. She managed to, and thus she saved
us, her children, from starvation, too. It was already at the time that
I listened to the stories of my mother and my grandmother with horror,
and I remember them now with the same feeling. Even after so many years
- more than half a century - this remains in my memory and I think it
will remain there for the rest of my life.
Our dear, beloved and long-suffering mothers protected by God had to suffer
and endure so much, they had to cry a lot, frequently because of us, their
husbands and sons. These eternal toilers had a very bitter lot. They sacrificed
themselves for the sake of their children. They tried to cushion at least
a little the blow struck to people by Bolshevist and Stalin's satraps.
By the way, we have been unable to recover from the blow up till now.
Our mothers did their best to feed and provide us with clothes in those
hard, hungry and cold post-war years. They did not eat enough themselves
and gave us the last piece of bread. They tried to give us education.
They begged us to study and made us study so that we could get on in the
world.
There is nothing in the world equal to what our mothers did for the country
and its people. We, their children, are eternally indebted to them. As
for country rulers of all levels, they thanked them in full by turning
into draught animals in their lifetime. It is painful to realize, but
there is no getting away from the fact. It is only when we become mature
that we begin to realize that our mothers are great martyrs and there
is no one similar to them in any corner of the planet.
You are holy women, as well as your life is holy, too… Men should bend
their knee before those of you who are still alive and those who are no
more and to ask your forgiveness for offending you both consciously and
unconsciously, for being unable to show our gratitude, for paying little
attention and giving little help, as well as for being unable to estimate
you at your true worth in due time…
My dear and beloved mother, I am ready to lay down my life only to see
you alive for a moment… I am aware it is impossible. You are my protection
from evil and my everlasting pain for the rest of my life.
I shall never forget the day we gave the last honors to you. God sent
the sun which warmed you for you to feel God's touch to you, His warmth
and care of your heavenly life when you were in a damp grave…
I dedicated many verses to my mother. Some of them are set to music.
Life is granted to a human being by God. How should one live it in order
to feel the joy of life while giving away his strength and health? Who
is going to give a hint and to teach how to live a worthy life? I think
there are hardly any teachers of the kind.
What is the meaning of our life, after all? Most of the rural population
have not got rid of what F. Engels called 'the idiocy of country life'.
I observe my dear fellow villages and come to the conclusion that the
people have lived an unhappy life. Many people, rather than just one man,
were deprived of small joys of human life, which sounds terrible. The
care for them always remained on paper. It goes without saying they took
care of themselves by themselves and did not expect help from anyone.
They survived on their own and, moreover, fed the country at the expense
of their titanic labor, while the rest - here I mean chiefs of all ranks
- did their best for the peasant always to be obedient and to make no
complaint.
… I can't stop wondering at the wisdom of rural inhabitants. I draw clever
ideas for myself, my work and my life from this fount daily. I should
say popular wisdom is always of help. It would seem to be a simple premise
that efforts made in summer would benefit one in winter. There seems to
be nothing exceptional about this wisdom. But everyone who was educated
through work understands its essence. So, what does it mean? Polesye land
was generous and rich in mushrooms, berries, fish and nuts. I say 'was'
which is most distressing, as owing to the human being there is little
natural wealth left over. Everything was destroyed, though it had to be
multiplied and exploited wisely.
In summer women and children mainly went to places rich in berries to
store them up for winter. The valley Ivanye rich in bilberries stuck in
my memory most. It was at a distance of 5 or 7 kilometers from the village.
We went there early in the morning, at about 5 a.m., and stayed there
all day long. Berry-picking is a rather tedious occupation as you had
to gather them all day long without a moment's rest. There was one big
break for dinner but berry boxes were filled by three quarters by the
time and there remained to be picked just a little. The children got extremely
tired by the time, though, so they did not want to set about the monotonous
job very much. Our mother would beg us, 'Just a little more patience,
children, and we would go home'. So we had to be patient.
Just imagine how much time one needs to gather a big box of berries that
one has to bring home then. But we knew what bilberries meant in winter
and that bilberry jam was very healthy and tasty. We made a lot of jam,
in fact, we made as long as we had sugar left, though in 1950s the village
lacked in sugar. I remember they used to bring saccharin from Moscow,
a sweetener with a foul taste.
Memory, like a long-term storage device, stores a lot of information accumulated
throughout life. I turn to it quite often, and this or that picture from
my life always appears. It is surprising that the smell of Motherland
is peculiar and incomparable to any other. The smell was felt especially
well in places rich in berries. The already mentioned valley Ivanye was
in a centuries-old mighty pine forest. The pines there were majestic and
thin and they had a peculiar smell of soft resin. Almost every pine had
a notch on it, with every notch oozing viscous substance which was either
pine sap or tears. The substance trickled down into a special funnel meant
to pick this substance. The scent in the forest was fantastic and incomparable
with anything. Well, if we add here the smell of birch trees, juniper,
thyme, moss, fern and motley grass we are going to have exactly what we
call Motherland and what remains with us for the rest of our life. It
is impossible to escape it. We are always enthralled by it. There is no
substitute for it…
As long as I live I wonder at God's wisdom concerning the way He arranged
human, natural and animal world. Everything is interdependent and interconnected
here. Only the blind do not see this. The rest of the people, I think,
can't but understand this. Nevertheless, they damage the nature, destroy
it and hurt its heart and soul. The same happened to the pine forest and
the places rich in berries that grew dear to me. The places do not exist
any more and are never going to exist. A human being has done his dishonorable
work and thus committed a great sin. At the same time he himself groans,
complains about his fate and laments asking why he is so unhappy. The
answer to the question is clear. The human being is sinful, and he will
not be absolved.
All things in the life of a human being, the society and nature take their
normal course. Time of berry-picking being over, there comes the time
for gathering mushrooms. Undoubtedly, the latter differs from the former,
first of all because the delight of finding several tens or, if one is
lucky, several hundreds of ceps is incomparable in emotional respect to
many spheres of human activity, that must be why I often dream about mushroom
hunt.
Mushroom season usually started in the second half of August and some
years it lasted almost till the end of October. It is remarkable that
people in our village gathered only ceps, brown-cap boletuses, orange-cap
boletuses, chanterelles, and yellow-cap boletuses. The rest of mushrooms
were unfamiliar to them, except poisonous death caps.
As the village dwellers used to say, there was a sea of mushrooms. I remember
going to the forest with my friends before daybreak. It may seem funny
but we started looking for mushrooms with the help of a pocket flashlight.
It was neither avidity nor greed, just an excitable hunt with the aim
to gather as many ceps as possible. Those with black caps were especially
nice. The joy was great when I found a family of ten or more ceps. Once
I even set up a record as for the number of ceps gathered. In 1969, when
a student, I worked in Siberia, in the Turukhan area all summer long,
so in September I was exempted from farm work and came home to the village.
A relative of mine knew good places with a lot of mushrooms growing, so
he suggested going there to gather mushrooms early in the morning. I should
say I had never seen so many ceps in my life. I gathered a huge sports
bag but I was so excited I could not stop. I had to take off a jacket,
do up its zip, knot its sleeves and put the autumn gifts there. When we
counted the mushrooms at home it turned out I had gathered more than 500
ceps. Most of them were dried, while the smaller ones were pickled. In
winter we cooked mushroom soup whose taste, in my opinion, excels the
taste of many delicacies. As for pickled ceps, as they say, there is no
need to comment. Everyone with no exception who was lucky to taste them
evaluated this product highly.
It sounds surprising but it is true that everyone who came to the forest
to gather mushrooms was rewarded with the gift, as a rule. I am sure mushroom
gathering has never left anyone indifferent. I remember my daughter's
delight when she found a mushroom. I think these emotions are impossible
to compare with anything. As for the influence of mushroom gathering over
one's health, there is no need to go into long reflection on the subject.
It is top delight to breathe in fresh air saturated with different smells.
Nature gives people everything as if saying 'please take much but reasonably
and do not do any harm, then you will be repaid a hundredfold'…
But nothing of the sort happens. Practically everywhere, in all places
that used to be rich in mushrooms, spawn is destroyed. Mushroomers know
it means mushrooms are never going to grow there. I witnessed in my childhood
how carefully and cautiously village dwellers cut mushrooms, at the very
bottom and covered the place with needles. My peers and I did exactly
the same. Today they do everything just the other way round. They pull
a mushroom out in a barbarian way and scatter the needles about. I can't
stop wondering why they do so. Why do people treat the nature and each
other in a wicked, indifferent and inhuman way? The question is difficult
to answer. One may resort to a simplified answer, of course, i.e. a hundred
wise men will not find the answer to the question of one fool. Nevertheless,
I think the answer should be looked for in the human soul. People's souls
seem to have become hardened, stiffened and embittered; the anguish of
nature and of another person does not touch them. They live according
to the principle 'happen what may, misfortunes and troubles should not
concern me and duck away, while the others may face the deluge'. This
is how we have come to live and how we live. The answer that human soul
should be treated is evident. The best doctor here will be nature, then
comes the rest. You should not harm a small insect, a spider, a bird,
a dog and a young hare. Your soul will suggest then that you should not
harm your neighbor and that you should love him.
I cannot pass by in silence another
hobby which started in childhood and lasted for many years which is fishing.
Most of the village inhabitants had fish for a meal practically throughout
the whole year. The earth did not spare for people, among other things,
this tasty and healthy food. As is known, fish is rich in phosphorous
which is extremely necessary for normal body functioning. It is very difficult
to explain in words the passion incomparable to anything (I mean fishing)
and it seems there is no need to. It was not that I liked eating fish
very much, either. What drove me, then, and made me spend hours at the
river with its peaceful backwater or at the lake waiting for bite. Frankly
speaking, I cannot find any explanation to it, just like I couldn't at
the time. There used to be four or five hours of waiting but the float
would not move. I would sit all the time keeping my eyes fixed on the
float and wait…
There was a lot of fish in the small river flowing near our house in 1950s.
One could catch the crucian carp, the perch, the pike, the tench, the
roach and the ruff. One could catch enough to cook grilled fish or fish
soup hands down. I caught fish only making use of a fishing line as I
did not accept different poacher tackle and disapproved of people who
used them. If someone is a good judge of catching fish by means of a fishing
rod then one has undoubtedly made a good fisherman.
In those years they caught a lot making use of a fishing line, sometimes
up to ten kilos of fish. It was difficult to cope even with one fishing
tackle, you just had time to throw the rod and to take the catch off the
hook. Once again I want to stress that the desire to catch fish and to
catch as much as possible is far from being avidity or greed; it is something
different. They often say it is passion. I do not dispute that, as it
may be true. I wonder what I myself was interested in more - to catch
a fish as big as possible or to have a big catch in general. For one thing,
when you start a fight with, say, a cunning carp or a predatory spike,
you have to outwit, beat and defeat them. I remember how much self-control,
patience, skill and probably professionalism it required to catch a crucian
carp when it started biting. If you pull the rod untimely, you will get
nothing for your pains; if you hold longer, the fish will swallow the
bait and leave. One should estimate everything accurately in order to
hook it in time. You feel a winner, then. Crucian carps were different
in size, but I never caught one more than 500 grams.
I liked fishing carps. As a rule, they are big in size. A carp deals shortly
with bait, it swallows it at once and then struggle begins. If you pull
a big carp at once, you risk tearing the fishing line. The fish should
be outwitted. Let it rage and strain itself to breaking point, and then
you will start pulling it slowly to the bank. Sometimes the fight like
this lasted for several minutes but it could not overshadow the joy of
victory when a huge fish was stirring on the bank. One cannot but remember
the famous work by Ernest Hemingway 'The old man and the sea'. I felt
the greatest pleasure when gaining such victory. This made me so engrossed
I wanted to experience it over and over again. The one who ever felt the
same is unlikely to change fishing for any other temptation.
I always treat true experts of hooking fish with respect. There were such
people in our village. They were Grigoriy Yarmosh, Vladimir Semenovich
Yukhnevich and Ivan Nikolayevich Matskevich. There are legends about them
as fishermen. We wanted to be like them and not to lag behind. Sometimes
we were successful and the catch was abundant.
In summer I fished practically every day. Uncle Grisha and I went catching
big fish to the Pripyat, several kilometers away from the village. One
could catch two or sometimes more big carps during the morning from half
past five till ten o'clock. I remember once a big carp pulled the rod
I thoughtlessly stuck into the ground on the bank. At the drop of a hat
I jumped into the water in my clothes and started swimming to catch the
rod rushing along in the water at a rather big speed. I caught it and
pulled to the bank a nice huge mirror carp. My joy was boundless…
I'd like to finish my story about fishing by a famous saying 'No pains,
no gains'. I received evidence of that through many years. One needs a
lot of time, efforts, self-control and patience before you reach the fishing
place and catch this very fish. You get back a winner, pleased and proud…
Our land that is called a breadwinner gives people its gifts generously,
especially to those who treat it carefully, with love and do not harm
it. In 1950s and right up to the middle of 1970s village inhabitants had
no idea about electric fishing lines, dynamite and other sadistic fishing
tackle and gadgets that certain individuals apply to catch a lot of fish
quickly and easily without taking much trouble. Barbarism will be the
only word to describe this practice.
This way the XX century barbarians deed their evil task. The river rich
in fish is no more, while the nearby ponds have almost no fish left in
them. No matter what you cast you glance at you see that all things used
to be different…
The destruction of our land is going at such a quick pace that in twenty-year
time we are going to have nothing left - no places rich in berries and
mushrooms, as well as no places for fishing. We are going to live on ersatz,
i.e. to eat mushrooms grown in greenhouses, berries ripening at artificial
light, artificial meat and bread with chemical additives. I do not think
it is going to do any good to human body.
As a result, we got what we deserve. It would be stupid to blame somebody
but ourselves for it. Everyone is to blame and there is no one to blame,
at least, we cannot hold somebody specific to account…
Nevertheless, we are responsible for our Earth.
A human being should be grateful to the land infinitely for being able
to live and propagate, while the Earth is doing its utmost to carry the
heavy burden. So many persistent wounds were inflicted on it in the past
century that it will take centuries to heal them… What future are we going
to have? We should turn to the Bible as the fount of eternal wisdom where
we'll find answers to many questions…
CHAPTER VIII
WOUNDED LAND
It is difficult to imagine what would be the progress like, what prosperity
would the Earth attain and what would be the quantity of its population
(probably it would amount not to six billion as it does today but to sixty
billion) if it had not been for wars and destruction of some nations by
others and if there had been no faction, manslaughter, repressions and
humiliation within a nation… Throughout the history of civilization there
has probably been no peaceful year without a war raging or smoldering
in this or that corner of the Earth. The long-suffering Belarusian land
absorbed a lot of blood, it was wounded, defiled and poisoned many times
but still it revived again!..
Germany alone which, as somebody remarked once, hatched out of a cannonball,
brought a lot of troubles to the whole world and to Belarus in particular
throughout many centuries. Germany, however, which rattled its armored
boot all over Europe for many centuries, is a distant and strange country
which has been hostile to us until recently. How can one understand and
justify, though, that inside our own country our adored and idolized rulers
persecuted, subjected to repressions and annihilated their own people
throughout the Soviet history in the name of some delusive ideas and utopian
ideas? It turns out that contrary to the official propaganda all men are
not friends and brothers but rather they are members of a dog-eats-dog
society…
It is impossible to enumerate all the troubles which swept past Belarus
in an endless string. Thanks God, the country did not suffer from Tatar
and Mongol yoke in the literal sense of the word. Yet, frequent forays
of steppe nomads who took a lot of prisoners brought a lot of misfortune
to the population. After coming to their senses and pulling themselves
together, Dregovichi, Krivichi, Rodimichi, Drevlyane and Yatviagy ran
down their offenders not infrequently, inflicted heavy casualties on the
enemy and liberated the prisoners. This was how the famous coat of arms
'Pogonya' ('Pursuers') that is at issue now came to exist… At the battle
of Siniye Vody Lithuanian forces under command of Algerd in 1362 long
before the Battle of Kulikovo routed Tatar khans completely. Later the
khans were defeated at Kletsk by Michail Glinsky… There is a legend in
our land that after the outrageous massacre in Turov perpetrated by Batiy,
the wells in the town were crammed with children's dead bodies, while
in the rest of them water turned into breast milk for a long time.
Tatar forays carried away lives of many thousand Belarusians, yet Belarus
covered West Europe from nomads… The raids of Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks
in XVI-XVII centuries were no less cruel. Turov, Pinsk, Mosyr, Rechitsa
and many other Belarusian towns were destroyed and burnt, while their
dwellers were exposed to horrible slaughter. The reprisal of Yanush Radzivill
over the recalcitrant residents of Turov in 1649 was especially outrageous.
Cossacks destroyed the whole town and killed all of its inhabitants. They
did not spare even infants then.
There was a period in the history of Belarus that many historians and
politicians prefer not to remember thus falsifying the past deliberately,
while most people are even unaware of the period. What I mean is the tragic
thirty-year-old war that is forgotten now, though it was much more cruel
and terrible than the Great Patriotic War. The war was wakened by Tsar
Alexei Mikhailovich, hypocritically called the 'quietest', with the blessing
of Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Nickon right after the 'voluntary'
accession of Ukraine to Russia on January 8, 1654. After Pereyaslavl Rada,
an important event in the history of the empire, which expanded the territory
of the empire to a considerable extent, there, naturally, came the turn
of the Great Principality of Lithuania.
On May 18, 1654 the one hundred thousand Russian forces advanced against
the Great Principality of Lithuania that had just 10 or 12 thousand people
under arms, all of them engaged mainly in guarding their southern frontiers
against daring forays of Bogdan Khmelnitsky's Cossacks. There began an
atrocious massacre and slaughter… Soon after hard and exhausting defense
Polotsk, Orsha, Mstislavl and many other towns surrendered. Bykhov's residents
defended themselves for a long time and in the most heroic way, as a result
they paid with their lives. Minsk was captured a year later. The conquerors
subjected it to unprecedented pillage and plunder. Fire flamed in the
town for more than a week, while soldiers who were in a rage threw children
and old people into fire. The young dwellers of the town were taken prisoners…
All in all, over three hundred thousand people were driven away as captives
to Muscovy, just like they were by the Tatars before.
The whole of the country was in ruins and sites of fire. No town escaped
destruction. Many villages and small towns, as well as castles and whole
provinces, were razed to the ground. Fields were overgrown with wood as
there was no one to work them. I wonder if the furrows, traces of vegetable
patches in the forest discovered by settlers who came from Ukraine to
develop new lands in Polesye at the beginning of the XX century remained
since the time. Not far from Pripyat and Sluch, as well as in other places,
settlements appeared where, judging by the finds of ceramics at the site
of ancient settlements, coals and old furrows, people lived several centuries
before and where life ceased after the area was plundered. Traces of settlements
of ancient people who lived in the places tens thousand years B.C. were
found near many of today's small villages like Zagatye, Vyazov Les and
Rudna.
As a result of the dreadful war we lost 1550 thousand people, i.e. 53
per cent of the whole population. Minsk, Rechitsa and Orsha volosts (small
rural districts in old Russia) suffered particularly. Towns became depopulated,
while many villages perished forever. Polotsk lost 93 per cent of its
population, Mogilev lost 75 per cent, and Pinsk lost 70 per cent of its
dwellers, while Turov lost 72 per cent…
Belarusians happened to participate in whatsoever wars, shedding their
own and somebody else's blood and washing land with it generously. The
Belarusian land absorbed an ocean of blood… The so-called 'mother' of
the famous battle of Poltava occurred nowhere but exactly in Belarus.
On October 9, 1708 at the village of Lesnaya of the present Slavgorod
district the Russian troops under the command of Peter the Great defeated
the Swedish army of Levengaupt and scorched out Mogilev afterwards… According
to some sources, the North war of 1700-1721 carried off lives of a third
of Belarusians.
The celebrated generalissimo A. Suvorov did not spare the blood of Litvins
when he was putting down the uprising of Tadeush Kostyushko in 1794. He
spared neither the old nor the young. No wonder Katherine II granted him
Kobrin volost with 13280 serfs in perpetual tenure for outstanding public
service. Suvorov's name is solidly memorialized in Belarus, with streets
in 60 places called after him. Until recently there were 23 kolkhozes
named after him. There is a museum of the generalissimo in Kobrin and
a Suvorov military school…
The Patriotic War of 1812 was imminent. Suvorov did not manage to participate
in it as he was good at waging wars of the empire expansion only, as well
as at crushing uprisings and mutinies. The war once again did not leave
Belarus out, it turned out to be a civil war with almost 200 thousand
Belarusians fighting in the Russian army and over 25 thousand fighting
on the side of Napoleon who promised sovereignty and restoration of frontiers
of the Great Principality of Lithuania. All this implied blood, lives
and health of people who were our fellow countrymen…
A terrible lot fell on Belarus, the country I am emotionally involved
with, the country I love and compassionate! It seemed it was not enough
that all European wars blew over it like hurricanes, trampling down crops,
carrying away people's lives and shedding blood on its soil. Belarus was
never strong and prosperous. Moreover, it did not gain its independence
until the end of the past century.
Now I am going to outline the major events in Belarus' history in the
20th century… The first congress of the Russian Social and Democratic
Workers' Party, the would-be party of Bolsheviks that brought so much
suffering to the peoples of the empire, took place nowhere but in Minsk
in March 1898. The gear of World War I was broken down on the territory
of Belarus from Pinsk to Naroch, so the monstrous war machine of Germany
stopped in Polesye marshes and at Naroch lakes. In Mogilev tsar Nikolai
II made a resolve to abdicate the throne on the last day of February 1917.
The disgraceful Brest Peace Treaty resulted in Bolsheviks giving up to
virtually defeated Germany vast territories of the country and innumerable
wealth. The march of the army of S. Bulak-Bulakhovich through the south
of the republic brought a lot of misfortune to Turov, Zhitkovichi, Petrikov
and Kalinkovichi, as well as to my native place Rudna. There was also
a peasant uprising in the central part of the republic in Slutsk district.
The national boundary passed in the very middle of Belarus following the
Treaty of Riga in March 1921… On June 22, 1941 at dawn the first Nazi
bombs dropped on Belarus. Three long years afterwards, the bloody vengeance
of occupiers to the unbowed people of Belarus kept up…
The disintegration of the Soviet Union was signed nowhere but in Belarus
in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8, 1991. The then chairperson of
the Supreme Soviet of the republic S. Shushkevich and the Prime Minister
V. Kebich, as well as the leaders of Russia and Ukraine, signed the document
that was made public by Stanislav Stanislavovich later…
Right up till the disintegration of the Soviet empire the criminal code
articles providing for severe persecution for dissenting, for an anecdote
about the leader, for the blame of the established order whatever way
it was expressed, for rejection and disagreement with it were in force.
Let's just remember mental homes, high-sounding legal proceedings and
secret inquisitorial prisons for dissidents. We should not also forget
the fate of the highly distinguished academician A. D. Sakharov and thousands
of our fellow citizens.
The events still remain fresh in our memory, while most cruel large-scale
repressions of the 1930s of the past century are forgotten by ungrateful
descendants, unfortunately. The events should not be forgotten, as well
as the nightmares should not be repeated. Memory is a sacred thing. The
nation exists as long as it remembers its traditions and its history.
A human being differs from other living creatures because he remembers,
or at least he should remember his history. To forget means to betray.
We should not all the more so forget anything, whether it is good or bad,
as there is no guarantee that the nighmare of the 1930s will not recur.
During the collectivization period alone 400 thousand families were declared
to be kulaks and sent into exile in Siberia, the northern areas of the
country and the Solovki, all in all about 9 million farmers were subject
to repressions. The year 1937 was ahead, as well as the hard times of
the Great Patriotic War…
My ancestors i.e. my grandfather and his brothers, my grandmother's brothers,
as well as my mother herself, though she was very young at the time, also
had to suffer a lot, to go through horrors of repressions and to lose
their lives as a result. It was at the time when peasants thought their
life to have come to normal. The anxieties of revolution and the restrictions
of collectivization were over, while the war clouds did not gather in
the west yet. No trouble was presaged, the more so because Alexander Vikentyevich
Kirbai, my mother's father, like most of peasants, welcomed the revolution,
believed it and served it faithfully. He defended its ideals in word and
in deed, as he did not doubt the new power was the power of the poor men
just like him.
Kirbai's family was really poor as there were seven children in the family.
They had little land, just enough not to die of hunger and to subsist
with difficulty. Both the old and the young worked from morning till night
to make both ends meet. World War I burst out, sparked off by Germany
and Austria, so Alexander Kirbai who had reached the calling-up age by
the time, was called up to fight at the front. He was wounded severely,
decorated with the Cross of St. George and went back to his native village
carrying a bacillus of Bolshevist convictions obtained in the trenches.
Lenin promised peace and land to tired citizens of Russia who lost their
faith, which was more than enough. The country was purely agrarian with
backward peasants as most of its population. At the end of XIX century
about 90 per cent of Russia's population was rural. Thirty years later,
before the collectivization, there were more than two thirds of them.
Alexander Vikentyevich, like millions of other peasants, received the
desired land. Being influenced by Bolshevist agitators, one wanted to
work the land in a new and better way. There was an example to follow.
In the neighboring village Buykovichi, which was the former estate of
lady of the manor Romaniya Levandovskaya 'Belaya Luzha' with its buildings,
tar works and even an abandoned distillery which used to bring in up to
20 thousand rubles return a year, local peasant organized a commune. It
existed for almost seven years. This type of labor organization was unreliable
and ineffective, thus the commune fell to pieces some years later.
Alexander Kirbai decided to do business in a new way. In the middle of
1920s he set up a collective farm named 'Sovetskaya Belorussia'. For Zhitkovichi
region it was the first experience of organizing kolkhozes that grew widespread
soon. The collective farmers lived a poor and unenviable life. They had
to plough big fields using horses and bulls, to sow, gather, carry the
crop and to thresh it. Everything was done by hand. The artel members
had enough bread, potatoes, cabbage and cucumbers, though, to get by in
winter. In 1929 mass collectivization broke out.
In winter of 1929 Stalin made his first and the only trip as a dictator
over the country and visited Siberia. He came back from there discontented
and embittered, as he received evidence that peasants did not wish to
hand grain over to the state, they were not going to part with their property.
They would pay the tax that took the place of surplus-appropriation system,
but they were not going to give any surplus. A farmer did not think there
was excess grain in the homestead. Moreover, the state propaganda proclaimed
from the housetops that a war was forthcoming and inevitable, so that
the country did not relax. Who was going to lose grain, his main wealth
obtained by hard work, on the threshold of a war? The General Secretary
was extremely outraged by some wisecracker, a former state convict, who
suggested him in an impudent manner dancing lezghinka so that peasants
would hand grain over. The latter did not suspect he brought out the beast
in Stalin when he made the suggestion. Stalin understood a peasant should
be bridled firmly so that he may not even think about freedom, while the
result of his work should belong to the state alone. The same year in
spring they started to pursue a firm and resolute policy of collectivization.
It was ordered to be entirely over with it in a very short space of time,
by spring of 1931. Most cruel draconian measures were made use of in order
to keep within the limits. It was already at the time that in the village
of Rudna, just like in thousands of other villages, that arrests and exiles
of peasants started. They concerned mainly those who did not want to join
kolkhoz, as well as more prosperous farmers, even if they gained their
so-called wealth like a peeling mill, a horse-driven straw cutter or a
threshing machine, a horse or a cow, by backbreaking toil of the whole
family. The events, though, were just a rehearsal of the dreadful 1937.
Alexander Vikentyevich as an experienced kolkhoz chairperson was sent
to be chairman of the kolkhoz 'International III' in the village of Belev
by the time. In December 1935 he was delegated to present Polesye region
at the Second All-USSR Congress of collective farmers held in Moscow.
There's remained a picture where he is among other delegates around the
national head M.I. Kalinin and other Kremlin masters of destinies whose
lifetime, nevertheless, turned out to be very short at the bloody times.
Alexander Kirbai was in the prime of his life. He was a man a bit over
40 who enjoyed authority with the village dwellers and an experienced
farmer… The peak of repressions when his elder brothers Nioplai and Vatslav
were brought into oblivion was over. His last brother Ivan was arrested,
too, but he was not executed by shooting, luckily. They sentenced him
to a lengthy term of imprisonment in a camp. It was the beginning of the
autumn of 1938 when they came to take away Alexander Vikentyevich. Alexander
Kirbai, a Bolshevik, a peasant and an honest man was arrested at night,
as dirty deeds are always done at the time. He was executed by shooting
two months later, in November 1938…
The village drained of its energy grew quiet and dumb. People were afraid
of saying too much, they feared their neighbors and relatives as if they
were enemies… In the meanwhile, a new trouble was drawing nearer, war
clouds were imminent. In the very first days of aggression against the
country that slept peacefully soothed by eyewash about the Red Army's
invincibility and lulled to sleep by the disgraceful non-aggression pact
with Hitler, the Blitzkrieg went to rack and ruin. The plan of the war
was elaborated not even by the possessed Feurer himself, but by Chief
of General Staff of the German army Shliefen as far back as on the eve
of World War I. It was finalized by Nazi General Staff headed by Halder
with account of conditions at the time. Wehrmacht units encountered the
unprecedented strength of mind and determination of Russian people they
did not provide for in the plans they elaborated.
Yesterday's collective farmers, workers and intellectuals turned into
soldiers. Marvelously enough, they stood up staunchly for the power that
humiliated, persecuted and annihilated them a short time before. In my
opinion, the phenomenon can be partly accounted for by the Russian spirit
and the Russian character, as well as by ineradicable faith in revolutionary
ideals and, above all, by the worship of leaders and confidence in their
infallibility implanted by the official propaganda and instilled by stick
and carrot policy… A peasant and a soldier have something in common. Both
are peasants by birth in most cases. A peasant hopes to gather good crop
in autumn when he goes out into the field in spring; otherwise there is
no point in sowing. The army when levying war must believe they will gain
victory at the end of the war. Implicit discipline, obedience and confidence
in commanding officers are indispensable in this case. Both a farmer and
a soldier endure inconceivable difficulties equally for the sake of the
outcome. Both are not afraid of any difficulties as they are accustomed
to hard and rugged life, to hardships and labor...
It has always been like this, with the past war being no exception. German
occupiers fought their way forward to the east. German strategists retained
fear of Polesye marshes where German engine of war got stuck during World
War I. The units of the 75th infantry division met the enemy at Brest
and retarded it later near Luninets. There was fighting around the settlement
Lenin for several days. After that the 28th regiment retreated to Zhitkovichi
via Yurkevichi going by abandoned wood roads that were nevertheless marked
on excellent German maps. At the village Zabrodye on July 17 there was
fierce fighting against Teutons who were advancing in a carefree fashion.
Soldiers of the 28th regiment and the 18th frontier detachment under command
of Major M. Golovko participated in the fighting.
The battle shifted later to the outskirts of Zhitkovichi. Red Army soldiers
fell back to Rudna. A correspondent of the division newspaper 'Za Rodinu'
('For Motherland') A. Vasyuk visited the village that day and described
the battle for Zhitkovichi in the paper.
Twilight of the occupation set in on July 18, though Turov was occupied
by fascists more than a month later, on August 23, while Petrikov surrended
even later. Hitlerite authorities quartered their provost corps in our
village for some reason, not in Zhitkovichi. A lot of blood of patriots
and partisans from Rudna and other villages of the district was shed here.
The neighboring village Vodopoylo was obliterated with all of its inhabitants
by a punitive squad. The village never revived. The only memory left of
the former village is a monument at the graveyard of Belarusian villages
in Khatyn…
Almost three years of unceasing fear and anxiety passed. It was already
in autumn of 1943 that eastern part of Belarus was liberated. It was disappointing
to dwellers of Rudna and of other villages that the front stopped quite
near, at the river Tremlya of Petrikov district and the river Stviga near
Turov, for more than half a year. They could hear gunning at the front
line and continued suffering bitter troubles caused by occupiers. At last
they lived to see July of 1944 when Soviet forces moved west along Petrikov
road. The forces were entirely different from the army that retreated
in 1941, as they were assured, strong and motorized… Zhitkovichi was liberated
on July 6 at one ample swoop. The artillery division under command of
Captain I. Kudinov particularly distinguished itself. By the end of the
same day fight was thundering somewhere at Mikashevichi. The long-expected
peaceful life came. Many people's lives were lost for this life to come.
Once again the country entered into peaceful postwar life, being drained
of its resources by the war and thrown many decades backwards in vital
and economic respects. Hundreds of towns and thousands of villages were
destroyed. Millions of people lost their lives. Belarus alone lost 2.5
million people. My native village Rudna missed 38 people who were killed
at the fronts during the Great Patriotic War, among them was I.P. Misenko,
my best friend Pavel Misenko's father. The health of my father who volunteered
for the army in June 1941 was also ruined in the war. In Rudna Village
Soviet fascists killed 56 civilians, of them 15 children. The area was
caused huge damage to. My fellow-villagers, relatives, my mother and father,
as well as I myself had to cover the damage by hard work for many years.
Forty years passed after the war was over. They were not easy and by no
means peaceful on a national and, moreover, on a global scale. A generation
that did not experience the horrors of war grew up, and there was hope
that God might be merciful to the long-suffering Belarus, and that its
soil would never turn the color of blood. The sins of the country rulers
who repudiated sacred things and who went far away from their people through
arrogance were too grave, though… On April 26, 1986 a catastrophe occurred
at the Chernobyl atomic power station at the very border of Belarus and
Ukraine. The consequences of the catastrophe were no less serious than
those of the war. The disintegration of the Soviet Union that followed
the accident soon afterwards, left Belarusian people face to face with
the misfortune and literally put them on the brink of survival.
The explosion of the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl power station threw
out into the atmosphere more radio nuclides than five hundred bombs dropped
by Americans in August of 1945 on the Japanese towns Hiroshima and Nagasaki
could throw. Since the late 1940s, radioactivity inspired people with
fear and panic. Our learned sages, though, decided presumptuously they
had managed to tame radioactivity and turned it into 'peaceful' energy.
How can one be certain that a wild animal, whatever mild it seems to be,
has become similar to a domestic cat and that its true being will never
awake?
The accident happened in Ukraine, but two thirds of all the radio nuclides
fell on Belarus' territory. The most dangerous and lasting radioactive
element caesium-137 contaminated about 2.5 thousand square kilometers
in Russia, 1.5 thousand square kilometers in Ukraine and over 7 thousand
square kilometers in Belarus. Besides, they shot over Belarus' territory
the radioactive clouds going towards Moscow, thus big areas in the midland
region of the country, as well as in Mogilev region, received an additional
dose of radio nuclides, though they were not to. The land turned out to
be contaminated, rather than blooded. Over 2 million people, i.e. 20 per
cent of the republic's population, have to live in the contaminated area
today.
The Chernobyl atomic power station is closed down, though the fourth reactor
still contaminates everything around. The containment above it is no protection
from radioactivity. It has to be changed. The question is where from to
take 780 million euro for the purpose? There is hope that the West will
help. God yield!
Are the troubles over? Nothing of the kind! They are impossible to enumerate,
one misfortune on my native land comes after another… The future will
answer in full the question of what irretrievable troubles land reclamation
brought to nature and all living things on earth. It is clear today, though,
that ill-conceived and ignorant drainage and melioration of marshes in
Polesye and in other places turned out to be a big trouble. This large-scale
activity was considered to be aimed at improvement of soil and its drawing
into farming rotation. If only it had been carried out in reasonable amount
and skillfully! Instead, they were as usual carried away by obsession
with grand-scale projects aspiring to gain some momentary benefit… In
less than ten years they drained 3.4 million hectares in Belarus, of them
over 2 million hectares in Polesye alone. Marshes play the role of lungs
for the planet, while Polesye marshes were lungs for the whole Europe.
They absorb carbon dioxide from atmosphere 6.5 times faster than woods.
Such melioration resulted in drying up and shallowing of rivers and lakes,
in dust storms, ecosystem imbalance and finally in the climate imbalance.
Woods and gardens die without water that penetrates into substrata, fields
lose fertility without moisture. Farmers fall short of crop instead of
seeing increase in it… Reclaimed swampland itself runs wild and overgrows
with bushes, tussocks and pastor's lettuce. Now they try, as far as it
is possible, to re-meliorate, i.e. to swamp the once drained areas, former
peat bogs and to plant forest where possible. They have to turn rivers
that were once straightened to the former course, which seems to be hardly
possible if we take into account the number of springs ruined. Several
thousand hectares of such land have already been swamped in Brest region,
round Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Now they work out a comprehensive program
to swamp Polesye, just like they did before to drain it. A fortune is
necessary to implement the program, i.e. several million in foreign currency.
Where are they going to get this money from? Is the West likely to help
once again? The long-suffering land will endure everything. Life goes
here in a quiet and measured way taking its usual course like a river
in its centuries-old banks, like water in the quiet Pripyat for hundreds
and thousands of years did… Year after year it is getting shallower and
quieter, though, its banks are silted up, willows and pussy willows become
higher and stronger and there are single oaks standing at the very water
here and there.
This is the way we live, work and amuse ourselves, make difficulties for
ourselves where there should not be any and then overcome them enthusiastically…
It is impossible to recognize the surroundings of Rudna as a result of
melioration. The river Naut that used to be so picturesque is now entirely
different, shallow, with no fish in it. The Obolonye I loved so much has
gone forever. There is no more big high water that caused grass grow luxuriantly,
oaks wither and die on this vast expanse. Life has changed a lot in the
past decades. Things are not what they used to be… I wonder whether to
rejoice or cloud over it. Of course if the changes were for the better,
what is bad about it? Things are quite the contrary, though, so I do not
see anything good and comforting for the country and its population in
the foreseeable future…
CHAPTER IX
DESTINIES OF PEOPLE
My father Nikolay Arsentyevich Alpeyev was born in 1922 in Belgorodchina.
This is the most tragic year of birth, just like 1923 and 1924. All young
men who were born in those years burnt in the heat of the battle against
fascism. Three or four men out of a hundred might come through it alive.
Before the war my father studied and worked in his birthplace. In July
1941 he volunteered for the army. He walked the roads of war from Moscow
to Berlin. After the surrender of Germany the unit where he served was
redeployed in Belarus, in Zhitkovichi where he met my would-be mother,
a village girl Shura Kirbai, who also faced distress with a vengeance
before the war and during the occupation period. In December of 1945 they
got married and settled in Rudna, where I was born on October 29, 1946.
When I am asked what year I was born I often respond proudly that I am
the same age as the Victory which is very near the truth, as my father
could have been killed and I would have never been born… This was the
way Victory entered my mind, just like those people who won it with blood
and sweat did, including my father. When I served in Germany in the Guards
rocket brigade I walked on the German land like a victor. I think, though,
it would be better if there had been neither conquerors nor victors on
Earth…
I never had a stricter teacher than my father. I still remember his belt
with a five-pointed star on the buckle that he made use of in order to
bring me up. Nevertheless, I am grateful to my father for such way of
upbringing. I do not nurse any grievance for such a cruel method of education,
as one should make allowances for his life full of hardships and the war
that frayed his nerves and covered his body with wounds. All this could
not but tell on his character and psyche… I knew since my very childhood
that the main thing in the village and in life in general was work and
studies, all the rest was for shallow people, so my childhood was actually
a life of work with very little joy and merriment that fell to my lot.
At the end of 1946, when I was just several months old, my father got
demobilized. We all went to my father's birthplace, then we lived at my
mother's aunt in Moscow for some time. My father as a former front-line
soldier was offered a good job and accommodation in the capital, but my
mother did not agree, so we came back to her native Polesye land. My father
was approved to the post of chairman of the kolkhoz 'Sovetskaya Belorussia'
at the bureau of Polesye regional committee of C.P.S.U. (B) (Communist
Party of the Soviet Union [Bolsheviks]), as all appointments to such positions
of importance were approved at very high instances at the time. He held
the position for several years. Once the chairman's light carriage was
carried off. The accident leaked out and became known to the district
department of the Ministry for State Security. My father was summoned
to the bureau of the district committee of the party. Major Kurepin who
was head of the department suggested expelling communist Alpeyev from
the party and prosecuting. My father who was no coward at all said, 'It
was not you who gave me my party card, so you will not take it away!'
What followed next is impossible to describe. The infuriated inquisitor
snatched at his holster and threatened my father. The chairman of the
district executive committee A. N. Antipenko, a former front-line soldier
himself and an extremely decent man took my father's side. Soon the light
carriage was found in the forest and it turned out the whole thing was
not worth a fig's end. If it had not been for Antipenko my father, a man
who went through the whole war, would have had his life ruined… A security
official similar to Kurepin once boastfully told young people without
a shadow of humor, 'Bullets whistled and shells burst at the front line
while we stayed in some remote place in bushes and administered justice'…
Time passed, and my father gave away his party card, neither to the district
committee nor to Major Kurepin, though, but to me. He fell seriously ill
in 1992, the illness being encouraged by radiation, as doctors inferred.
He was dying slowly. The last three or four months before his death I
visited my parents almost every weekend.
At one of such arrivals my father snatched a moment, called me and asked
to get his party card from under the pillow. I was staggered, as he did
not part with his card even dying. This was the way ideology ate into
people tightly. My father told me then, 'Son, we were deceived'. This
was the conclusion the man who considered the party and communism to be
sacred notions drew at the end of his life. He was ready to, as they say,
catch by the throat anyone who, God forbid, would speak badly of the party
and the Soviet power. It really came to blows sometimes when village 'politicians'
discussed some disturbing event. My attempts to express any doubts were
given a hostile reception. They used to ask, 'What have you seen in your
life? How can you know?'
When a child, I was tremendously impressed by Ivan Andreyevich Tishchenko,
uncle Vanya as he was called, the war veteran and village driver who also
went through the war. Everyone in the village, both young and old, respected
him for his huge strength. They said that he could alone pull out of mud
a thirty-hundred-weight lorry, the only one in the kolkhoz. He was also
respected for being able to pronounce no more than two or three words
in twenty-four hours. He was never heard saying a swear word. By the way,
I imitated him so much in my childhood that it was a real problem to me
to say several words running. I started to speak more easily a bit later,
when I studied at Belarusian State University. Ivan Andreyevich remained
in my memory forever as a kind, gentle and highly cultured man. He was
a genuine village intellectual who had never received any education.
It would be unfair not to mention two more men from the village who were
my unintentional educators. They were Vladimir Semenovich Yukhnevich and
Vladimir Vasilyevich Matskevich. Vladimir Semenovich was a war veteran,
too. There was no one in Rudna who could play any musical instrument so
skillfully, whether it was the guitar, the balalaika or the mandolin.
What was most important, though, is that he implanted love for native
countryside in me. Year by year I came to understand what communication
with nature means when you and the world around, i.e. the river, the meadow,
the forest, the field and birds, make one whole. It is only in man and
nature unity where origins of human kindness lie. I was about seven when
uncle Volodya started to take me fishing. He was an inveterate fisherman.
I think what he loved most of all was fishing, and then came wine. We
span fish only, the bait usually being a worm, and we always came home
with catch.
After the district was liberated from German fascist invaders, 18-year
old Vladimir Semenovich was called up for military service in the standing
army. He was badly wounded and contused at the front and became disabled.
He was awarded a medal 'For courage'. I saw the decoration only once,
as Semenovich did not like to demonstrate it. They used to say about him
in the village, 'Volodya is the man who would not hurt a fly'. In the
postwar years the war invalid lived a poor life unworthy of a victor but
he never lost his warm nature… Vladimir Vasilyevich Matskevich was very
mich similar to Semenovich. I cannot but mention another good person,
Grigoriy Yarmosh, who was also a war veteran. He left a trace in my soul,
like many other fellow villagers. The same can be said about Petr Yukhnevich
whose father was killed during the war, and about Volodya Degelevich.
Now near my father's grave at the village graveyard there lie war veterans
Vladimir Semenovich, Ivan Andreyevich and uncle Polinar, a perpetual compliant
kolkhoz toiler who worked as a machine operator. All of them lived an
extremely short life and they saw very few good things about it. What
did they fight, lose their health and strength and shortened their lives
for? Does their Motherland remember about them? It has too many obscure
sons of the kind…
I understand that I said very little and sparingly about the people who
exerted a tremendous influence over me and who fostered the sense of a
citizen and a patriot in me without even being aware of it themselves.
Soldiers of Victory, they were modest and ordinary. They did not like
any glorification and praise. In the village there were about twenty former
front line soldiers who enjoyed well-deserved respect with the village
dwellers and, definitely, influenced the upbringing of youth by their
personal life example. It is difficult to understand these people. I realized,
nevertheless, why they spoke so zealously in support of Stalin even after
the XX congress of the CPSU. The thing is that they, being twenty or twenty-five
years old at the time, under command of Joseph Vissarionovich gained a
victory over the Hitler army that pinned down the whole of civilized Europe.
These views became ingrained in them, so it was useless to argue and try
to make them change their minds. They are our fathers and grandfathers,
so we should take them as they are …. We should bow to these ordinary,
modest and honest people who were perpetual toilers. It was not their
fault that the greatest betrayal occurred and a great power was destroyed,
so they have to spend the rest of their lives in poverty, humiliation,
bewildering what for they fought, shed their blood and did not spare their
lives. They did their duty before their native land honestly…
I often recollect my childhood and youth that passed in my native village.
The late 1940s and 1950s were hard years for the whole nation. National
economy was restored or, to be more exact, it was built anew as everything
was destroyed. In Minsk alone 90 per cent of all housing stock was destroyed.
Big and small towns and villages were mostly razed to the ground and burnt.
They had to build anew everything, including factories, plants, kolkhozes,
schools and institutes… Losses in manpower were especially big and irreplaceable.
Everyone lived a hard life in those postwar years. Children were always
hungry. They were happy to be given a small piece of bread. The bread
baked in postwar years was of poor quality as it contained some admixtures.
We dreamt of pure bread without any admixtures. White bread was rare dainties
at the time… Everyone, young and old, worked hard both in kolkhoz and
at their homesteads. Boys of ten or twelve years old ploughed, mowed and
did all agricultural work on a par with grown-ups, as not every family
saw their fathers come back from the war… Nevertheless, they helped each
other and lived a joyous life, with songs, in peace and friendship, despite
hardships, hunger, cold and hard work that was practically free. Our children
have never faced anything of the kind and if they are told about this
life by their parents they do not always believe them.
Years of studies in primary school clearly remained in my memory. I remember
the way we carried books, copy-books and glass inkpots, first in cloth
bags sewn by our mothers and later in kersey bags similar to those kolkhoz
team-leaders used to carry. I also remember our teacher Mariya Ivanovna
Yukhnevich. I have only good memories left about school. From the fifth
to the seventh form we went to school in the village Greben. Though the
distance of about four kilometers was not very long, it took two hours
to get there and back. Not everyone, of course, had good clothes and footwear.
My friend Ivan Yukhnevich and I walked this distance every day. We went
to school early in the morning and got back in the afternoon. Later, since
the eighth form, we went to school in Zhitkovichy. The distance was longer;
we had to walk ten kilometers one way…
Most parents strived for their children to study despite postwar hardships.
My mother's words that I had to study to make a real man stayed in my
memory for ever. This was, actually, the only one agitation of my parents
for education. Nevertheless, coupled with hard farmer's life that bordered
on utter poverty it was enough for the words to produce their effect.
It goes without saying, a belt also played a considerable role in my education,
because whenever I was given a three, my father's educational method would
come into force.
I tried to study conscientiously and finished seven-year school with good
marks. The issue of my further studies in secondary school at the district
center was taken for granted. In 1960 I continued my studies in the eighth
form at Zhitkovichy secondary school #1. Of course, our coming to a school
in town entailed many problems. First of all, it meant overcoming a psychological
barrier. Anyway, the district center seemed to be a big town as compared
to the village. We had a sort of alertness as to the way they were going
to treat us and how studies would go on. Of course, we ourselves did not
realize it was important that our knowledge acquired at village school
should comply with the standards of a town secondary school. In practice
there turned out to be some difference, though not very significant, Very
soon we were able to match the pupils from town. In my opinion, this depended
a lot on the teacher and the pupil himself. Of course, there were different
teachers and different pupils…
Many teachers gave us sound knowledge of their subjects. They were Petr
Pavlovich Azema, Mariya Sergeyevna Koneva, Adam Viktorovich Moroz, Nina
Fedorovna Tsiribko, Pavel Kirillovich Semenchuk and Anatoliy Mikhailovich
Frolov. The teacher of mathematics Mikhail Mironovich Chechik who was
a knowledgeable and very exacting pedagogue stuck in my memory especially
well. It was when I myself became a teacher that I realized the mistake
of Mikhail Mironovich. He wanted everyone to be good at math, so quite
many pupils dropped out of school or continued their studies at night
school because of him. When we met thirty years after we finished school,
we recollected him more often than other teachers. No one bore any malice
against him. Practically all school-leavers of Zhitkovichi secondary school
#1 who finished school in 1964 got higher education.
Pupils in our class were friendly. There were no conflicts on national
or religious grounds at the time and there could not be any, though about
a third of pupils in the class were ethnic Jewish. It was already at the
time that the foundations of humanism, humanity and respectful attitude
of pupils to each other were laid. All subjects were taught in Belarusian
and I should say the teachers had a good command of the language. I focus
your attention on this in connection with one very relevant detail. More
than thirty years later, when I worked at History Sub-department of Belarusian
State University professors, associate professors and lecturers were taught
their mother tongue so that they were able to deliver lectures and conduct
seminars in Belarusian…
There were recognized authorities in our class such as Sasha Denisenko
who graduated from Higher Engineering Anti-aircraft and Rocket Military
Academy and became an officer, Valeriy Gonikman who graduated from Minsk
Institute of Radio Engineering and who is also a famous basketball player,
Anya Savchits who graduated from medical institute and who is Honored
Doctor and a Supreme Soviet deputy in one of the republics of the Russian
Federation. In general, all my former classmates turned into worthy citizens
of their country regardless of the field of their activity.
Years of study at Zhitkovichy school stayed in my memory for life due
to everyday 20-kilometer quick marches from home to school and back. We
got up at six in the morning. Our mother woke us up in a quiet and tender
way, 'Boys, get up, or you will be late for school.' My younger brother
Nikolay and I, however much we wanted to sleep, got up, dressed, grabbed
our breakfast which was usually potatoes with cucumbers and cabbage or
potato soup and set out for school. Bread was in short supply at the time.
We sometimes managed to buy several loaves or, more often, just one loaf
after queuing for a long time at the shop near peat works. I wanted to
eat so much that I pinched off the heel of the loaf on the way home. My
mother never told me off about this as she understood everything. The
road to Zhitkovichy was a pain in the neck to me, especially when it was
slushy spring or muddy autumn. Kersey boots turned heavy then and let
water through. My feet were wet till evening, when I took my boots off
coming home from school. Moreover, our quilted coats got wet through and
the wind in fields chilled to the marrow, so one can just imagine how
'carefree' our school life was. Anyway, many of my contemporaries who
were born in postwar time lived the same life. Our parents scrambled for
our living.
We knew since childhood what hard peasant labor was like. There is always
something to do in the village. After school we did not set about our
homework right away (we found time for lessons in the evening, sometimes
at night). We had to do work about the house first. When it was season
we had to plough and to mow… We had to carry feed for pigs from the swamp,
e.g. duckweed, to graze cows when our turn came and to weed the vegetable
garden. There were no lame excuses like 'I do not want to' and 'I won't'.
In winter it was easier, as you had to chop wood. Usually they were rough
pine stumps. They were difficult to split. It took a lot of effort before
you chopped one. We also had to prepare chopped straw for the cow and
to collect potatoes from the cellar and so on. In general there is a great
deal to do at the homestead.
During the summer holidays there was also no thinking about any rest.
We all worked in the kolkhoz (it started to be called sovkhoz later) to
earn money to buy trousers, boots and a quilted coat. I liked collecting
potatoes. I also liked working at the hayfield where the whole village
worked on a fine day. Everyone looked at the sky with anxiety lest it
would start raining. The way they pulled hay out of the quagmire to a
dry place by horses stuck in my memory. When the animals fell into the
swamp up to their bellies, barrows were put to use to carry out haycocks.
I remember lifting the loaded barrow with a village man, though I was
still a boy. It was very heavy but my strength seemed to increase when
I thought they would call me a weakling. Our hayfields were at a distance
of 10 or 12 kilometers from the village, which was quite far. We got there
by carts or sometimes by a thirty-hundred-weight lorry, the only one in
our kolkhoz. This was the first stage of the crossing. Then they walked
over poles. Haymakers walked with scythes over their shoulders and women
walked with rakes and bags with modest food.
On the whole, many of my memories are associated with the valley in the
flood plain of the Pripyat known as Obolonye. I have never come across
a more surprisingly picturesque countryside corner in my life. In summer
I often went fishing there with my friends Tolya Matskevich and Pavel
Misenko, but most of all I liked to come here with Ivan Nikolayevich.
It was here that I started to feel keenly my affinity with nature, to
understand life and its beauty that not every man could see. The man who
realizes that nature is a living thing with a peculiar life of its own,
with its joys and sorrows is a happy one. I seem to have come up to this
understanding…
Unfortunately, in the last several decades of real war against nature
under the guise of land reclamation, river straightening and careless
and wasteful way of wood harvesting our nature is dying and now it is
far from what it was like when I was a child. This is a tragedy not only
for nature but also for the whole of the nation. If we ponder over the
problem we'll realize that social crisis gives rise to crisis in nature.
The slogan 'We should not wait for bounties from nature but we should
take them ourselves' was popular in the era of space and time exploration.
Nature worked for people for millions of years, but they still did not
think it was enough. They decided to put the squeeze on it, as a result
we obtained what we have now. Instead of river floods, dense forests and
flowering meadows there are clouds of black dust coming up and hot dry
winds blowing. The area of natural grass decreased by dozens of times,
the same concerns the area of hayfields. Standing woods are withering.
All this results from 'revolutionary' activity of human beings and the
'reasonable' way of land reclamation, not to mention the terrible Chernobyl
disaster that is going to tell on our progeny for a long time…
I shall never forget fishing at the lakes and former riverbeds of the
Pripyat and at Obolonye. The bite could be so good you did not manage
to cope with a fishing line. We got there on foot or by bicycles and settled
under a mighty centuries-old oak-tree. We frequently sat till late at
night by the fire on which fish soup was cooked and where fat was roasted,
as there was always something to talk about and something to recollect…
I listened a lot as I did not have a lot of things to recollect at the
time. I observed the life of nature. I was particularly excited when a
crimson sun was sinking over the distant forest in the evening as if saying
good bye and glancing back at the earth it had warmed during the day.
The sunset's dying glow was burning for a long time, almost until the
summer midnight. Might I perceive the nature this way under the influence
of Yesenin's verses I read the day before? The poet seemed to have described
my native Polesye in them. It was at the time that I came to love Yesenin's
poetry. Everything was familiar in his clear and sad poems, namely, haystacks
that reflect in water, blue evenings and clear spring daybreaks, and 'ricks
of the sun in water'… Poetic words are extremely powerful! It seems to
me that Yesenin's lines conform most closely to life in our native land
where they drink and cry in foul weather waiting for better days to come.
Today they drink and cry because of their coarse life and despair… I wonder
whether we'll see better days to come.
Under the influence of my favorite poet I took to writing verses myself.
I cannot judge myself whether I succeeded in writing them or not. I was
presented with a slim volume of Yesenin's verses by my friend Pavel Misenko
who worked in Siberia building Bratsk hydropower plant where he was sent
to by the komsomol organization. When he came back home, he attached me
to himself sincerely and unwittingly. Undoubtedly, it was also under his
influence that my proper understanding of Motherland started. A lot of
things happen in life in a simple and unexpected way!
I remember March 5, 1953, the day of Stalin's death. The multimillion
country wailed…At night the man on duty at the Village Soviet knocked
at the window and answering my father's question about what had happened
uttered through tears that Stalin had died… There began commotion, and
the whole village learnt the news at the same instant. Everyone, both
young and old, was shocked by the news. What is surprising is that even
those whom this cannibal deprived of their grandfather, father or brother,
cried. My mother and her sisters mourned over their father's murderer,
too. There was the same question on everybody's lips, 'What will be the
future of the country and the lot of each of us now after the great Stalin
has died? How are we going to live without him?' As you know, he was perceived
as God by everyone. He was not thought to be a murderer, the cruelest
of those known to history, but he was considered to be living God and
the Tsar of slaves. But people were not aware of Stalin's true nature
at the time… Half a century passed since the time and most of society
began to see clearly after they gained new information about the butcher
of nations. Even these days, though, at demonstrations, on the days of
revolutionary holidays and the leader's birthdays a pitiful cluster of
old men and women runs about with Stalin's portraits. They say, 'The country
needs a master. Our great country USSR needs one.'… They are trying to
reanimate a dead man and they do not realize it is nonsense. This is totalitarianism
in the form of Stalinism and ideological brainwash similar to incurable
illness. They worship a butcher, have blind faith in him and enjoy self-abasement
with enthusiastic exclamations… Such fanaticism is inconceivable to the
mind free from bacilli of this faith. Indeed, the nation that does not
remember the lessons of its history is a poor one…
The space flight of Jury Gagarin on April 12, 1961 was a memorable and
joyous event that roused an inexpressible feeling of pride in our Motherland
(as we considered at the time). It was really something to be proud of.
The first man in space was ours, Soviet, just as it should be. Moreover,
he was socially similar to us… It never occurred to anyone at the time
that the flight involved huge costs. The country was half-starved and
half-naked and suddenly a Soviet man flew into space. No one could even
assume that this 108-minute circuit round the Earth would give rise to
a new phase of the arms race that called for huge financial expense. Only
a decade and a half passed since the most destructive war was over and
our national economy was very poor. The ambitions of the communist leaders,
though, were strong and self-assured. Soviet people experienced permanent
ideological pressure, so a triumphant war was a kind of trump card held
by advocates of the regime. Let's just remember the common phrase 'We'll
take off our last shirt in order to prevent a war'. They infrequently
took it off against the nation's will. The tough pressure of taxes is
within many people's recollection, when even fruit trees near houses were
laid under big tribute and when people hid piglets in their cellars or
in privy places near the village because one could keep a strictly limited
number of livestock at his homestead, otherwise they were fined. The only
good thing is that under Khrushchev it did not come to repressions and
exiles, like it used to be before.
There was no electricity in my village at the time and they baked bread
in hearths. People sowed flax and hemp, and in the long winter evenings
women span and wove coarse cloth to have something to cover up people's
private parts. The only equipment was a horse and a carriage; people broke
their backs from morning till night for nothing, while the Kremlin contended
with the West. We know the way the whole thing was over. It could not
be otherwise. As a result, we reap today bitter fruit of the ill-conceived
policy and arrogant ambitions, of the incessant everyday betrayal of one's
own nation interests, of humiliation over this nation, of tough pressure
of misanthropic ideology that was hypocritically passed for progressive
and philanthropic one for many decades. They declared that everything
was for the human being and in the name of the human being, though it
was not like that at all…
Now we are busy with things other than space flights to the Moon and Mars.
It would be good if we laid the road from the district center to the village.
'Flee if you can'… Thus, the space flight in 1961 was very costly to us
if we regard it from the present-day stand. The USA has outstripped us
a long time ago not only as far as space is concerned. It is shameful
to recall Nikita Khrushchev's declaration made in the early 1960s that
communism would set in by 1980. It was never characteristic of the leadership
of the most 'just' communist party to be ashamed of their actions and
promises, which is why it died so easily, without agony, in 1991. There
is common truth that seems to be lying on the surface which says one should
regard the interests of his own nation as of paramount importance, one
should think in the first place about the nation, but not about world
supremacy, about his ambitions and worldwide leadership. Unfortunately,
none of the Soviet leaders thought about its people. At all times the
nation was used only as a means to attain private ambitions, as draught
animals and cannon fodder. Such was the custom from Lenin to this very
day. The phrasemonger Mikhail Gorbachev finished the inglorious Soviet
state existence logically. This way, sooner or later, all empires, tyrannies
and dictatorships that disregard their nations' interests come to an end.
Their dreams that the present generation would live under communism carried
them too far, a much further distance that Gagarin flew. When they officially
declared communist society formation, very few people believed that one
would go into a shop, took everything he needed and exactly as much as
one needed and it would be free of charge. Would not anyone be greedy
and seize more than he needs? How many generations should be brought up
in the ideal spirit? People were dull, semi-literate and half-starved
and they could hardly imagine themselves in the communist paradise… It
was mainly the idea that everything would be free that occupied people's
minds, which is quite natural. Say, if my mother gave me 15 or 20 kopeks
for a meal, so that I could buy two patties and a glass of compote, no
wonder I was always hungry. In fact, the whole of the nation lived from
hand to mouth. The whole of 'Khrushchev's communism' boiled down to a
full life in the minds of ordinary people.
Thus, we plunged into the period of 'most active communism building' honored
with grand and, as usual, impracticable 'historic' resolutions of XXII
party congress. It was October 1961. The inhabitants of my village had
problems when 'building communism' as there was no electricity in it and
houses were lighted up with oil lamps just like under the tsar. The village
shop often lacked kerosene so they lighted splinters as if these were
cave times… Surprisingly, almost everyone believed in the tale of communism.
There had to be something people could believe in to endure everyday life
hardships. What else could they believe in? Stalin had been debunked by
the time. Most churches were closed while the powerful propaganda machinery
spared no words to describe the near paradise on earth…
There were a lot of functionaries who championed ideology and politics
among people. They were more numerous than farmhands, as many of the latter
either were killed during the war or went to towns in search of better
life. Among the functionaries there were Village Soviet chairmen, district
committee secretaries and regional party committee secretaries, as well
as the General Secretary himself. We also had a kind of our local leader
who was secretary of the sovkhoz party committee. He would sometimes go
by a GAZ car to the feeding farm where my mother worked in rubber boots
standing ankle-deep in liquid manure. The party 'leader' did not leave
the car in order not to stain his high luster boots. He would drive through
the feeding farm, glance over it in a businesslike manner and sometimes
fling out a remark when going by, not addressing anybody specific and
not waiting for an answer, 'How's life, comrades?' And off he would go.
This well-fed and complacent functionary did his 'duty' at the feeding
farm and hastened to report to the district first secretary that building
communism in the village was in full swing…
They 'built' communism so zealously that my mother, like many of her peers
who worked at the farm for many decades, became disabled. She was so worn
out she could not even get to the well and pull out a bucket of water.
Her 80-year-old sister brought her bread from the shop. When I had time,
I always helped my mother at the farm. I carried buckets and distributed
fodder to bull-calves. Though I was 25 at the time and went in for sports
like weight-lifting and wrestling and could run twenty-kilometer cross-country
race with ease, after two or three hours of work at the farm I was wrung
out to the point of exhaustion. The backbreaking work where mainly women
were employed started at half past four in the morning and lasted until
ten in the evening, with a short break. They worked every day and had
no holidays. My mother was pleased that bull-calves gained weight well,
that she was paid 100-120 rubles a month and that she was presented an
honorary diploma and the badge of the socialist emulation winner at the
district rally of foremost people in agriculture… Time passed, her strength
and health ran short and her success in the past turned out badly. At
night my mother could not fall asleep due to the pain in the joints of
hands and feet disfigured by poly-arthritis and the oppressive pain in
the small of her back. This was the 'old age of honor' and 'earned rest'…
When my mother was retiring on a pension, fanciers of being economical
at the expense of other people, who themselves settled down in cozy metropolitan
offices and who made use of the outcome of hard work of millions of people,
made a resolve that work at a farm at weekends should not be taken into
consideration, thus they reduced considerably the old-age allowance that
was scanty enough as it was. It did not occur to them that animals should
be fed both at weekends and on week days…
This was the way farmers lived, built communism, 'overtook and left behind'
America by dint of their own hard toil ('Cow from the state of Iowa, take
care!'), they used oil lamps and did without any medical assistance and
any medicines, but they never fell ill… They found comfort in the hope
and the delusive dream that communism would set in very soon. This was
the way the whole country lived and worked…
… The last school bell rang, so it was time to decide on what to do next.
I dreamt of entering a military school, yet, the bent for history prevailed
at the very last moment, so I posted my papers to History Department of
Grodno Pedagogical Institute. I was leaving my native village for the
first time in my life. I had money just enough for the journey and basic
subsistence.
We were lodged at a student's hostel while we were taking entry exams.
I lived in the same room with Lyosha Semenyako who was entering Mathematics
Department, Tolya Bogdanovich and Volodya Kulik who were both entering
History Department. It was easier for them to enter as Lyosha was let
off from the army to take entrance exams which was a common practice then,
while Volodya came from a kolkhoz where he worked as a machine operator.
Production workers and servicemen entered horse concours, so it turned
out that Lyosha and Volodya entered the institute while Tolya and I returned
home without anything. We only wasted our nerves, time and our parents'
money. We passed our exams but were not selected from among other candidates.
After vain expectation it became clear I had to look for some work.
At the time there were not enough teachers in village schools, in fact
just like they are not enough today. As a result, the subjects like physical
training and work education were often taught by people who did not even
have any secondary education, so I became a teacher of physical training
and work education at the Greben eight-year school that I finished myself
not a long time before. Of course I was excited before my first lesson.
A man who has little to do with teacher's work may think that I had to
teach unimportant subjects. I do not belittle the significance of algebra
and physics that one might never need in his life, but a person's life,
primarily his ability to work and attain goals set, depends on his physical
condition. That is why my first lesson was devoted to the role and significance
of physical training in social life. Pupils listened to me attentively
and asked questions. I felt I interested them in the matter. I prepared
very carefully for each lesson and drew up a detailed plan of work.
I tried to spend as much time with my pupils as possible. Every day I
stayed at school after classes, as there was always something to do. We
prepared very persistently for the district school sports contest. We
took the first three places in many kinds of sports then and, by my reckoning,
we had to turn out first in the team event. At the contest I encountered
dishonesty of the powers that be for the first time in my life. Local
officials divided out the winners' laurels beforehand over a bottle and
thus they deceived me. I was depressed as I could not understand why it
was possible. Everyone saw that my pupils had no match in basic sports…
I shall never forget my first pay which was 77 rubles. It was a considerable
amount of money for those days. It was enough to buy boots and quilted
coats for my father, my brother and myself. The prices were so reasonable
then! My mother was grateful for small favors, as usual. The rest of the
money was paid to my fellow villagers so they could build a fence around
our house.
Time passes very quickly, especially if you are absorbed in your work.
The work gives a special delight when you see the outcome. You want to
work more and better then, and you put off your personal problems somewhat
a little farther away. I worked at school and I hit the books to enter
the institute. I decided not to choose another institute and another special
subject. I was sure of success, as I had gained some experience and enriched
my knowledge considerably. There was only one little thing left, namely,
to pass entry exams and to be selected from among other candidates. If
I did not enter the institute it meant I would be conscribed …
In August of 1965 I was in Grodno, 22 Ozheshko Street again. I cannot
say anything bad about the lecturers who examined us, as there was not
any bias on their part. I understood later, though, that if they had any
doubts whether to give me a four or a five they certainly gave me a four.
I felt my knowledge was not enough to be given a five but I still deserved
more than a four. I did not enter the institute again. Still, they are
right saying 'Everything that happens will turn out for the best'. If
the examiner had given me a mark higher then I would have entered the
institute and my life would be different. When I came back, my mother
cried and said that country people were not meant to enter any institute…
CHAPTER X
BLESSED LABOR
Geographical location of Belarus, its climate and, what is most important,
its hardworking people make the country a region favorable for farming.
The republic's progress in the sphere was considerable. Moreover, there
was a tendency for steady increase.
A distinctive feature of Belarus' farming industry in the last decade
of the past century was high availability of power-driven tools, sufficient
supply of mineral fertilizers and up-to-date farm machinery, best seeds
and fuel. The average crops productivity in the republic reached 20-25
metric centners per hectare, while in most favorable years it was 30 centners
per hectare, potato yield reached 200 or more centners per hectare. In
Lyuban district where 17 Heroes of Socialist Labor (the highest civilian
award in the USSR) worked, they gathered almost 500 centners of potatoes
annually. The rural economy efficiency was apparently growing as they
laid the basis and real opportunity for this growth.
In 2006 the gross yield of grain crops in Belarus reached 6 million tons,
possibly due to strained interpretations and doctored records. One should
take into consideration that the country's population has become almost
fully self-sufficient as far as potato and vegetables are concerned. The
private sector with only one sixth of arable land at its disposal produces
around 90 per cent of potatoes, 83 per cent of vegetables, almost 100
per cent of fruit and berries, over 65 per cent of milk, more than 50
per cent of meat and over 45 per cent of eggs.
They use less and less mineral fertilizers in the rural sector year after
year. Acute shortage of farming machines and fuel resulted in the breach
of optimal spring sowing time. Finished off combines 'Don' and 'Niva',
that are still quite numerous in kolkhozes, scatter a significant part
of the crop while harvesting. The cost of fuel is continuously growing.
This tendency is increasing and perpetual.
It is evident that agricultural enterprises in the form they are today
have outlived their usefulness. It is high time they started to develop
farming on a large scale, just like they do all over the world. They should
give land to those who wish and can cultivate it. In my opinion, under
existing circumstances management of the land should be mixed, there should
exist good cooperative farms that are able to work their land, farming
should develop, joint stock property of the land and means of production
should exist, too. We should adjust to the conditions, the possibilities
and the reality, as there is no other way out.
It goes without saying that agriculture in the republic requires well
thought-out and continual help. The help should not acquire the form of
one-shot campaigns on the eve of key agricultural events like sowing and
harvesting, when they withdraw funds from banks and other organizations
that are thought to be prosperous in a frantic rush.
National currency stabilizing is a strategic and intractable task. They
can enable farm enterprises, though, to set prices for their produce by
themselves, this is the task they may realize. Farm enterprises are going
to gain profit and pay taxes to the budget. There will be more active
influx of capital in those spheres of production where prices will be
higher. The capital inflow, in its turn, will increase the output of commodities
in short supply and bring their price down. Goods will be sold at a reasonable
price, so dealers will be discarded as useless. Inner and export prices
will go up to a sound level, sales proceeds, profits, exchange earnings
of the state and tax revenue will increase by two or three times. Capital
will accrue more actively in the property of enterprises. The state as
the proprietor of fixed capital will be able to subsidize prices for those
consumers it will see fit. Subsidization will not hurt interests of other
investors or any self-supporting producers.
In the meanwhile we may observe the picture similar to an anecdote at
any farm today. People gathered around a tractor that won't start and
consult how to move it. An experienced and competent machine operator
comes up to them and they ask him if anything can be done in this situation.
'Of course it can', says the competent man, 'the tractor should be replaced'…
It is easy to advise, but how can just one tractor be replaced, where
can they find the means, spare parts and fuel? We do not mention more
grand tasks and drastic changes. Nevertheless, the problems should be
overcome one day as there is nowhere to slide down, there is abyss ahead.
In 1979 rural population of the republic totaled 4 million 298 thousand
people, while according to the latest data it is about 2 million 800 thousand.
By the time of the 1999 census the rural population made up 3 million
83 thousand. The number of rural places declined by over a thousand in
the last decade, it makes less then 23 thousand today.
The country' population is ageing in a steadfast way. The number of people
who are 60 has exceeded 25 per cent; while according to the World Health
Organization the nation is called ageing is the figure reaches 7 per cent.
The scientists consider the rural population of Belarus is going to decrease
significantly in the next few decades.
Things are even more painful as far as population groups are concerned.
In 1979 there were 2 million 184 thousand of able-bodied village dwellers
while now there are only less than a million of them, i.e. almost 40 per
cent less, with almost half of these people being employed directly/straight
in farm production. About 600 thousand people work in this industry and
their number is expected to decline twice in a decade due to the problems
agriculture faces and the extremely poor living conditions. Due to the
social conditions our village is no less than100 years behind developed
countries. Old men and women still carry water for their needs, e.g. to
water the kitchen garden and the cattle, in buckets. Bath is a luxury
in most villages. The standard of peasant dwelling corresponds to that
of XIX century while the standard of livestock keeping places has fallen
even lower. Waste waters soak into draw-wells from dwellings, cattle keeping
places and toilets, which was inconceivable when our forefathers lived.
There were so many attempts and even more assurances of the forthcoming
material changes for the better in rural sector. Academician Trofim Lysenko
confused the leader of all nations Stalin talking profusely about branchy
wheat which was pure fiction. Nikita Khrushchev dreamt of changes for
the better while going from one extreme to another, from developing new
land to maize growing. Mikhail Gorbachev, the man 'marked by God' who
destroyed the country later when he was the General Secretary of the all-powerful
and ambitious Communist Party relegated to oblivion, assured of the changes
in Krasnodar… There were many men of the kind in Belarus as well. Who
knows, there might be more use if they did not interfere with their endless
orders and inspections, as well as with their useless prompting and checks.
What is absolutely evident is that it is not wise to act on an impulse.
Lenin was utterly wrong when he wrote just after Bolsheviks assumed power
that it was necessary to go over quickly from the former foundations of
life to the new, socialist ones. That was absolutely impossible to do,
though. Nothing in the world around us, whether it is nature, economy
or a way of life, can be broken down easily, all of a sudden, at one stroke.
It is easy to break down but very difficult to build… The laws of dialectics
work very clearly, so it is surprising why Vladimir Ulyanov, a great expert
on dialectics, neglected the laws and even the common sense and the simple
and elementary logic of social evolution. As if the experience of the
French and other revolutions was not enough. It is impossible to drive
people into happiness by iron hand, even a child seems to realize this.
Human blood is not water at all, there is grief, suffering and torments
of people behind it. Bolsheviks, though, did not care a damn about anything…
Vladimir Ilyich not only took the liberty but also had the impudence to
decide single-handedly how the people would live and what way they would
go, thus being an evil genius of Russia and the original source for everything
that happened to the country and its people soon afterwards.
Who was it who said once that 'Lenin lived; Lenin still lives and will
live forever'? They are alive today, these small Lenins and Leninists.
One of them is Gennady Zyuganov who is leader of the Communist Party of
the Russian Federation. He now teaches us the way to live as though all
difficulties had been overcome in his own country and human rights were
not violated every hour, as if thousands of young men were not killed
in Chechnya and corruption, mafia and lawlessness did not thrive in Russia…
The new Bolshevist leader once again propagates communist ideals very
zealously, he says the former Communist Party was not right, it went the
wrong way, but here is the new one! He says they condemned their mistakes,
repressions, genocide and now they are innocent before the people. I think
if Zyuganov or any other advocate of communism had relatives in their
family who were innocent murder victims of the Soviet power, like my family
has, he would not forgive the crimes of Bolshevist ideologists so easily
and willingly. Or rather what can one expect from them? We know that all-national
head Kalinin, as well as Molotov and Voroshilov betrayed their wives without
any hesitation, Kaganovich, Poskrebyshev and many other true Leninists
renounced their brothers. Now the Russian communist number one who possesses
no real power and has no force available, except private ambitions, undertakes
to decide for somebody, to point out and to advise… Isn't there enough
of blood, red colors and lies?
Communist leaders could do nothing good for their people as they did not
have God in their souls. They destroyed and sold everything they could,
including the great power and its people. They did not even repent afterwards,
unlike the Germans who not only condemned National Socialism but also
rooted it out. Yet, many of the Christian commandments correspond strictly
to the dogmas of communists. Their most important slogan 'peace, labor,
freedom, equality, brotherhood and happiness' meets exactly the teaching
of Christ.
Why did not Bolsheviks reconcile themselves to the teaching from the very
beginning, start the same idea and follow the same way? They could not,
as the initial discrepancy, falsity, anti-humanism, denial of obvious
things and aspiration to call black white and vice versa, put communists
in irreconcilable antagonism with God. Thus, people did not support communists,
so their power based on fear, violence and humiliation could not last
long. Everything was over in the way we see today in all spheres. i.e.
the cultural one where there is confusion and agitation, the social, as
well as economic one with chaos, production decline, unprecedented inflation
and impoverishment of the people…
We have always been and shall be with the Russian nation and Russia, only
if it is the Russia of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Yesenin but we shall
never be with the Russia of communist leaders. I trust the Russian president
Vladimir Putin and believe in him. Anatoliy Chubais, Boris Nemtsov, Sergei
Kirienko, Grigoriy Yavlinsky and Irina Khakamada possess a powerful intellectual
potential… I suppose them to be able to solve the most complex tasks their
country faces. Vladimir Zhirinovsky wins me over by his openness, sincerity,
straightforward views and at times by his understandable sharp words.
I say all this because I am interested in the neighboring great power
and I hope our countries will have a common future, though absolutely
different from the relations we had before. Our people remember everything,
especially good things. It is terrible when friendship is sealed with
blood. Friendship should be based on faith. Belarus and Russia have common
Slavonic background, as well as similar, related culture. Economic relations
should also be tight and interconnected. Only this type of mutually beneficial
'colonization' is acceptable, just like the one in Singapore when roses
were in blossom at the filling stations selling cheap petrol at the time
English colonizers were leaving the place.
… I constantly come back to the beginning of XX century in my thoughts.
It was the time when Russia started and livened up as a result of reformative
activities of the then prime minister P. A. Stolypin. As is known, he
counted on the peasant who was an experienced farmer, so Russia sold a
great amount of grain and foodstuffs, unlike they did in the Soviet time.
The village lived quite a good life in 1920s, too. People were unwilling
to sell grain surpluses dirt cheap which is quite clear as the grain was
grown by the sweat of their brow. Bolshevist leaders disliked extremely
that people began to live a prosperous life and were unwilling to give
agricultural produce away to the state. If that was the case, they decided
to take the produce away by force and to change the way of living in rural
areas radically. Today it is absolutely clear to everyone that prosperous
people promote their country's prosperity, while at the time the thoughts
were considered to be seditious and criminal.
There were quite many isolated farmsteads around Rudna at one time where
big and hard-working peasant families lived and worked. They moved to
the khutors, as they sometimes call separated farms, after Stolypin reforms.
They lived there a hard but fairly well-to-do life though they had to
toil a lot. Later these people were pinned a label of 'kulaks' (wealthy
peasants) and were forced to join kolkhozes against their will, some of
them were exiled or executed by shooting. We see nowadays what this practice
resulted in. The country produces just about 350 kilos of grain per head
a year, though it was 685 kilos as long ago as in 1990, while leading
powers produce three times more grain. We also produce 165 kilos of meat
per head while ten years ago the figure was 115. For many years our country's
propaganda asserted that meat is indigestible food unusual to human body,
so we should take less meat. In America, though, despite the fact the
food is 'heavy', the average consumption is over 150 kilos meat per man
a year, yet Americans do not seem to suffer particularly from eating this
amount, moreover, their life expectancy is longer than ours.
But on the other hand, they produced and still produce and, thus, drink
more vodka than in Russia whose nation was always considered to be a drinking
one. In the first years of the new century its output totaled almost 200
per cent as against the output in 1980. Average consumption of alcoholic
drinks per inhabitant in Belarus comes up to 11 liters, while the figure
in the leading European countries reaches 7 or 8 liters. The official
number of alcohol addicts in the republic approximates a million, yet
the World Health Organization advises the figure should be multiplied
by 3 or 4 in order to have a just picture of alcohol dependence. Alcoholism
in the country is furthered significantly by the reality of our gloomy
life, when those people who are weak in spirit are forced to seek consolation
in a bottle. Price for vodka is increasing constantly while demand for
it is persistently falling, thus drinking folk switches over to different
surrogates and cheap wine, and hence there are different illnesses and
alcoholism. This is another tragedy of our nation.
It was already at the beginning of the past century that a peasant family
could cultivate considerable areas of land and gather good crop for their
time due to their industry, great inner self-organization and what is
most important, their enormous love for land. As is known, they frequently
used a wooden plough, heard nothing of mineral fertilizers, renewal of
breeds and of a special science called agro-technology. Instead, they
had the notions of 'measures', i.e. if they sowed one measure they gathered
six or seven. In good years crops productivity came up to about 20 centners
per hectare, which is very surprising as they did not have any machinery
to help them at the time… If it had not been for the World War I, the
coup of 1917, called the October revolution later, the civil war, economic
dislocation and Bolshevist management methods that followed, the agriculture
of Russia would have achieved a great progress.
In Zhitkovichy district today they speak and argue a lot about the farm
of Mikhail Shrub. In 1999, for example, just after the farm was organized,
they produced 2.5 thousand tons of vegetables; the figure was even more
in 2000 which was a favorable year for agriculture, while the farms all
over the district produced only 400 tons. Today the potato, grain and
vegetable productivity is also much higher than in the district on average.
The farm workers receive a very good pay. In this respect there arises
a question why we should have the numerous arrays of kolkhozes and sovkhozes
with their officialdom. If there were 50 farmers like Shrub working in
the district they would not need any kolkhozes at all…
I may be objected that Mikhail Shrub is no ordinary farmer. He used to
be a chairman of the Turov Settlement Soviet, was well-connected and had
an opportunity to rent some quite good land (though Turov area generally
has good black earth famous all over Belarus) and to buy the minimum of
the machinery necessary at depreciated cost, cheaply. The problem is that
everything in the country from diesel petrol to a plot of land should
necessarily be got out and arranged. Why doesn't the state offer a farmer
everything he wants and may take to work the land to feel its real master?
Far from every village dweller will agree to at least rent the land but
the one who agrees will put all his efforts into it, he will sweat his
guts out to cover his work and to get some profit. It is exactly this
type of farmer that the state should help by credits, machinery and seeds,
i.e. the state should invest something to receive even more in return.
The thing P. A. Stolypin planned almost a century ago is putting out its
weak shoots only now. The reformer wanted to make this practice not an
exception but the rule for the whole of Russia, including North-East territory
where Stolypin's reform, by the way, produced the most marked effect.
The people, though, were never allowed to do things and act in the way
they considered necessary, better and more expedient. These people, i.e.
Ulyanovs and those who were after him always substituted the opinion of
the whole people by their own opinion. They pressed the people down, oppressed
it and taunted a man in political, economic, social and cultural respects…
There is no end to this practice in sight.
In order to buy a tractor 'Belarus' worth 12-15 thousand dollars, while
the best models cost over 20 thousand dollars, it requires a whole kolkhoz
herd. I happened to see an instruction sent to kolkhozes by district authorities
saying the combine 'Don' is bartered for 40 tons of meat. They also need
fuel which is more expensive than anywhere else in the CIS, and spare
parts to repair machinery… That is why the technical stock of kolkhozes
and sovkhozes today reminds of the state of village inhabitants, it dies
just like the village itself. In the meanwhile, the tractor a kolkhoz
may buy at 12 thousand dollars or a bit cheaper if they lease, it if the
kolkhoz makes an added effort, costs a farmer, who is thought to be an
owner of private property by the state, no less than 18 thousand.
It is as clear as noonday that we should revive the institution of private
property in one form or another, the property that should be sacred and
inviolable according to the law, if we think about the future and are
not willing to find ourselves short of grain. No one refutes significance
of kolkhozes at this stage of the game (here we mean only the best ones
headed by men with sense). Part of the land, nevertheless, should be given
to farmers who are experts in it and who can work in an effective way.
It would be a good idea to give long-term credits in the form of machinery
as there are thousands of new 'Belarus' tractors at the ground of the
group of enterprises 'Minsk Tractor Plant' in the open air. The tractors
had better work on farm fields so there would be no need to take financial
means away from weak banks and other organizations by means of stern decrees
and edicts and to push the panic button every spring and autumn. 'Struggles
for harvest' would become past history. It is well-known that struggles
entail losses and there are both victors and conquered after them…
What do I mean by the word 'krestyanin' (peasant)? In my mind, the word
comes from the word 'krest' (cross). A man bears his cross from the cradle
to the grave. The burden is heavy but the peasant has no other choice.
Since the beginning of time he lives in poverty and always lacks something.
Sometimes the season is dry; another year the crop is flooded. He is far
from striking good luck every year. His life is struggle for survival.
It is confrontation with everyone, ranging from a team leader and the
highest district or higher official. He should put his heart and soul
into work in the kolkhoz while his private farm, as usual, takes second
place. Local authorities seem to taunt farmers, as they apportion haymaking
plots for farmers to be able to feed their cows in late autumn as a rule,
almost in October. The practice is quite common almost everywhere, as
if there was a special decree that kolkhoz chairmen stick to willingly.
It is a sore issue in rural area as to making hay for the private cow
or fodder for a pig or a hen. I remember in summer all village children
had to get duckweed out of ponds for domestic pigs or to carry rich climber
plant from the swamp, or nettle, goose-food. This 'surplus appropriation
system' got under our skin, but it couldn't be helped as the task set
by the father for the day had to be fulfilled.
Child labor was used widely in postwar years both at home and as social
work. In the end of May school was over, there was vacation ahead, but
it was not meant for village kiddies as they had to work in the kolkhoz
or sovkhoz. A team leader ordered children to do work as if they were
grown-ups. No one refused, one of the reasons being it was an opportunity
to earn some money to buy textbooks and a bag, but the main reason why
they did not refuse was that it runs in the blood and the genes of village
children to obey somebody in a position of power implicitly, even if he
is a half-educated team leader. All time, strength and even health had
to be devoted to work in the kolkhoz… There were no lazybones among village
kiddies, unlike there are now in urban and most rural families. There
were no spongers and thieves among my peers, as well. Reared in the atmosphere
of hard work since their very childhood, village children in most cases
reached for knowledge, many of them graduated from higher education establishments
and finished technical secondary schools.
I am not an adherent of the view that today's youth should have similar
living conditions but we should undoubtedly foster respect for work and
a working man. It is common today for many children right in kindergartens
to wish to do some business but I wonder if everyone can make a businessman?
Who is going to work in the field, at a plant, in an office or at school,
then?
People will always support the power and one leader or another if they
are full and have confidence in the future. How can our people be confident
if the prices for foodstuffs have reached and in many cases have exceeded
global ones, while the salaries… They promise to raise people's average
salary to 300 dollars or over, but it takes a long way from promises to
reality, besides, what does 'average salary' mean? An official will be
paid 250, while a farmer will get 50 or most probably much less, so we
get the average salary of 300. The salary may be counted in different
ways. I wonder if 300 dollars is a deserved salary for a working man,
especially if we take into account that the minimum consumer budget rate
approved by the Council of Ministers for a family of four people is 169
600 rubles per head. Practically the whole of the society is worried by
the issue of what is going to happen tomorrow and how we are going to
live.
How could people live if their well-being is coming down every day while
prices and public utilities rate, as well as other tariffs, are growing
continually at a rapid pace? Even the life of farmers under Stalin does
not seem so gloomy, though people then were crushed by work and taxes
and put most of their efforts into public production and the remainder
of them into their own small holding that came to their help and did not
let them perish. They had some hope their life would improve in prospect,
and it did as the prices were falling, though a little, kolkhozes were
supplied with new machinery and fertilizers, people built houses for themselves
and villages were equipped with modern amenities. Today we cannot hope
for anything of the kind.
Who cares about an ordinary man and poor people who make the majority
in the country? There are very few rich people. Nevertheless, most of
goods, both produced in the country and exported ones, are meant exactly
for rich people as far as their price is concerned. Household goods and
cars, modern building materials and medicines, as well as quality foodstuffs
can be afforded by prosperous men only, who are businessmen or high-ranking
officials. Thus, it is quite logical that a state should take upon itself
at least part of the expenses to provide favorable living conditions for
the poor, but the state, being just as poor as its citizens, is unable
to afford it…
We should not make believe that we are going to get out of the squeeze
in alliance with Russia only. I would agree with the thesis provided Russia
was firmly established, first of all economically.
Yet, Russia itself has been badly ill for the past two decades and I suppose
the illness is far from being transient. We may only hope that Russia
would recover in several years.
As a poet once said, where shall we float? It is clear that we should
go our own way, while adopting the experience of neighboring countries
that managed to overcome a similar crisis for a short time, Poland in
the first turn, as well as that of other leading European countries. A
miracle won't occur. There is no one to pin our hopes on, but for us ourselves,
no one is going to help us, prosperous Western countries, some sponsor,
as well as Russia that faces a lot of problems of its own.
What has to be done in rural sector, in my opinion? It won't be out of
place to remind the famous historic fact that Germany's economy was an
extremely painful sight after World War II was over. It was only after
they were given a huge aid in the form of capital investments from abroad
that the Germans healed the wounds of the war in some five or seven years
and walked a resolute step to their citizens' material welfare. It is
possible our country needs as much as the air it breathes some aid in
the form of direct investments, including those from outside, otherwise
it would be problematic for our broken agriculture to get to its feet.
Land is an invaluable asset that may and should not only feed but also
help lay the groundwork for the progeny. It's time to decide a point of
private property for land. It may sound unpatriotic but it would be more
sensible at first to lease land to rich foreigners. In this respect the
benefit for the country is obvious as new jobs will be created and sound
infrastructure will appear. The efficiency level of the farming industry
will grow by tens of times.
Land should be owned by those who may, wish and are able to manage it
whether it is a good cooperative farming enterprise, a farmer who is able
to cultivate it or a foreign investor. There is no doubt, though, that
all the processes should be law-regulated and controlled by the state.
It is the direction that we should look for the future of the village…
CHAPTER XI
THE IRON MOLOCH
It was not a long time ago that Belarus was considered to be a real Mecca
among the member republics in the Soviet Union. Its benign climate, quiet
and stability in all spheres of life, favorable geographical position,
good nature and hospitality of its population, potato as the national
agricultural feature that would come to help in any trouble and, most
importantly, high economy development level - all this turned the country
into a longed-for place for living, working and for military service.
It was thought to be a piece of good luck if somebody got an assignment
to a job or residence permit in Belarus, as well as became employed here.
Competent and reasonable people realized, though, that Belarus with its
poor natural resources and remoteness from ports produces very little
and that the country turned into a kind of an assembly plant for a number
of reasons. Thus, Belarus occupied the territory of about 1 per cent of
the USSR's territory (207.6 thousand square kilometers) while its population
numbered 3.7 per cent of the total Union's population and topped the USSR
chart firmly as for the manufacture of many vital goods and foodstuffs.
The republic had low population density. It was 48 men per square kilometer.
Much of its territory, about 36 per cent, was occupied by wood. Forty
five per cent of Belarus' area was taken up by agricultural land. I think
the following information will be of interest. According to official data,
the country today has about two thousand manufacturing enterprises, 700
of those are private ones, while 1300 are state-owned. The general number
of industrial enterprises was reduced almost by half in a decade.
It goes without saying that the republic would not have made such progress
in its industrial production if it had not been for close integration
relations. By the way, industrial production made up 38.2 per cent of
the gross domestic product 10 years ago. In 1999 it totaled 29.6 per cent.
Union republics supplied the Belorussian SSR with cast iron and black
rolled metal, non-ferrous and precious metals, coal and oil, as well as
the produce of timber, paper making and wood-working industries, building
materials and so on. Ukraine alone supplied over 100 items of different
goods. Tens and hundreds of co-operating enterprises from other republics
participated in manufacture processes of such giant production associations
as the production association 'Minsk Tractor Plant', 'BelavtoMAZ', 'Gorizont',
'Integral', 'Atlant', 'Gomselmash' and others.
Economic integration of the member republics in the former USSR went on
for almost 70 years. This was a multi-sector complex with over 45 thousand
industrial enterprises, 400 sectors, subsectors and industries, 46.2 thousand
manufacturing firms, scientific production associations and enterprises
that produced over 25 million items of goods. It is quite clear that the
huge production required proper organization, considered and efficient
structure and established inter-sector, sector and regional connections.
Balance and interconnection of all sections in the national economy complex
played a role of no small account, too. The slightest misbalance in the
established structures brought about huge economic losses and had a negative
influence upon political stability and people's psychology.
The Belorussian SSR ranked high among the Union republics as for the manufacture
of vital types of industrial output in 1970s. It ranked second in the
output of chemical fibers, motorcycles, lorries and watches. The republic
topped the chart in the production of potash fertilizers. Belarus took
the third place in the manufacture of machine-tools, TV sets, bicycles,
tractors, mineral fertilizers and household refrigerators, it ranked fifth
in the output of electrical power and sixth in the production of cement.
Many sectors of the republic's economy enjoyed further development. The
rates of industrial output increase over the period of the ninth five-year
plan were higher than the average ones all over the Union. Besides the
existing ones, there emerged new sectors of production specialization,
such as oil-processing, chemical and oil-producing.
The 1970s and 1980s were the years of further intensification of Belorussian
economic region specialization within the system of the country's national
economy complex. It was also the period when its industrial potential
was built up. Industrial sectors defining technological advance were developing
rapidly. They were power engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical
industry, electronics and radio engineering, precision instrument making
and others. In 1985 every sixth tractor, every fifth motorcycle, every
seventh bicycle, every eighth machine-tool, every ninth refrigerator,
almost 50 per cent of potash fertilizers, 24 per cent of chemical fibers
and filaments and 25 per cent of watches produced in the Soviet Union
were manufactured in the republic.
Fuel and energy complex of the BSSR used oil and gas. The ratio of fuel
oil and gas in the republic's fuel balance increased from 4.9 per cent
in 1960 to 67.1 per cent in 1975. Gas mains Dashava-Minsk and Torzhok-Minsk-Ivatsevichi
were put into operation. They built the second line of the gas main Torzhok-Minsk-Ivatsevichi
in 1978. The Lukoml hydro power which produced 2.4 million kilowatt-hours,
the Berezovskaya hydro power producing 920 thousand kilowatt-hours and
the Vasilevichskaya hydro power with its 322 thousand kilowatt-hours,
the Minsk heat station-3 (435 thousand kilowatt-hours) and heat station-4
(900 thousand kilowatt-hours), as well as Novopolotsk heat station (505
thousand kilowatt-hours) made the basis of the power industry. All power
stations were part of the Belorussian power system that was linked through
the integrated power grid of north-west and central USSR to the Poland's
power supply system and the power system 'Mir'. The electric power stations
capacity as against 1960 increased tenfold in 1987. Fuel and energy output
was increasing continually, year after year, which held good right until
the early 1990s. Working efficiency in all spheres of production grew,
too.
Mechanical engineering and metal working made up over 30 per cent of Belarus'
industrial output. This sector ranked first in BSSR's industry as for
the gross output volume, basic production assets and the number of industrial
personnel. By 1970s BSSR machine building formed into a major industrial
complex that included over 100 enterprises and their branches, as well
as tens of research, engineering, design, and planning departments that
had their own well-developed experimental base. Automobile industry specialized
in the output of delivery trucks in Minsk and Mogilev and extra-heavy
dump trucks known as BelAZ in Zhodino. The Belarus automobile plant in
Zhodino, awarded with the Labor Red Banner order, is the only enterprise
in the country that produces heavy and extra-heavy off-road pit-run vehicles
with load-carrying capacity of 40 tons, 75 tons, 110 tons and 180 tons.
Mogilev automobile plant named after S.M. Kirov specialized in the manufacture
of dump truck articulated lorries for closed work, single-axis haulage
trucks and scrapers. The plant also produced four-wheel drive heavy dumpers
with weight-carrying capacity of 20 tons.
The branch included, except automobile plants, the plant producing bicycles
and motorcycles in Minsk and the enterprises of component specialization
that belonged to the production association 'BelavtoMAZ'. The 'BelavtoMAZ'
association produced 72 models of vehicles and articulated lorries with
the load-carrying capacity ranging from 8 tons to 180 tons. They also
developed and researched 54 other models of vehicles, including pit-run
dump trucks with the load-carrying capacity of 280 tons. The Minsk automobile
plant, awarded with two orders of Lenin and the order of October Revolution,
which is the parent enterprise of the association, specialized in the
manufacture of diesel vehicles and articulated lorries, trailer stocks
and multi-axis wheel cross-country haulage trucks. During the eleventh
five-year plan they developed the manufacture of lorries 'MAZ-6422' and
'MAZ-5432' that could work as part of main articulated lorries with the
load-carrying capacity up to 32.5 tons. The lorries enabled to cut freightage
costs by 30 per cent, to cut down fuel consumption considerably and to
increase traffic operations without any growth in the number of drivers.
Life duration of vehicles before their capital repairs increased 1.2-1.5
times. In 1980 64.6 per cent of the aggregate output of the association
had state quality mark. The produce of the automobile plant was exported
to 52 countries. An automobile of the Minsk plant was awarded with a grand
prize at the International industrial exhibition in Brussels. It was awarded
with a gold medal at the Leipzig Fair.
Over 1500 enterprises of the Soviet Union participated in the manufacture
of MAZ, BelAZ and MoAZ vehicles. Many enterprises of the Russian Soviet
Federative Socialist Republic and Ukraine supplied 'BelavtoMAZ' with finished
units and machine parts. Other Union republics also supplied components,
e.g. Latvia delivered radio and electrical appliances, Lithuania delivered
compressors, Georgia delivered plastic manufacture and other goods, Azerbaijan
delivered metal, while Kazakhstan supplied heaters. BelAZ vehicle 2300
h. p. engines were produced by the association 'Kolomna plant' in Moscow
area.
Tractor building enterprises were part of the production association 'Minsk
Tractor Plant named after V.I. Lenin'. They produced wheeled universal
tractors 'Belarus', tractor engines and spare parts. The output of tractors
increased from 34.2 thousand in 1960 to 97.6 thousand in 1986. In recent
years 27 or 28 thousand tractors a year left the production line. There
was time, though, when they produced about 100 thousand tractors a year
in the factory workshops, just the amount Lenin dreamt to have for the
whole of Russia. 'Belarus' tractors were delivered to all Union republics
and exported to 90 countries, including the Council for Mutual Economic
Assistance member states, as well as Great Britain, the USA, Canada, France,
Finland, Sweden and others. 'Belarus' tractors were awarded with 16 medals,
including 13 gold ones, at international exhibitions and fairs.
Component units and parts for 'Belarus' tractors were received from 270
specialized enterprises, while supplies and materials came from over 400
plants. Fifty research institutions, higher educational establishments
and planning and design organizations in the republic and all over the
Soviet Union worked in the subject area of the plant to solve complicated
engineering tasks.
Many plants worked successfully in the sphere, among them the Minsk Motor
Plant, the Gomel plant of starting engines, the Bobruisk plant of tractor
engines and tractor units, the Borisov plant of units, the Vitebsk plant
of tractor spare parts and the Minsk gear plant. Agricultural engineering
of Belorussia was represented by the Bobruisk agricultural engineering
plant and the mechanical plant, the 'Gomselmash' and the 'Lidselmash'.
The basic production of agricultural engineering was ensilage harvesters
and self-propelled fodder harvesters produced in Gomel, fertilizer spreaders
manufactured in Bobruisk, potato and cabbage harvesters produced in Lida
and cattle farm equipment manufactured in Brest and Mozyr. The production
volume of tractor building and agricultural engineering increased more
then fivefold in the period from 1961 up to 1975. They produced about
16 thousand of ensilage and fodder harvesters in 1960, while in 1986 they
manufactured 25.8 thousand of them.
They were building two new plants in Smorgon, the branches of the Minsk
Tractor Plant. The first one was meant to produce front axles, transmissions
and steering wheel hydraulic boosters. The second one had to be a founding
and forge plant. They planned that the branch of the Minsk Motor Plant
that started to be built in Stolbtsy would be a major supplier of tractor
engines. Tractor output had to come up to 120 thousand a year due to the
capacity extension of 'Minsk Tractor Plant named after V.I. Lenin' association
but we can see that their output fell by almost two thirds.
The major machine tool construction enterprises were Minsk machine-tool
construction plants named after October Revolution and after S.M. Kirov,
the Minsk automatic transfer line plant, the Vitebsk machine-tool construction
named after S.M. Kirov and after Komintern, the Vitebsk tool-grinding
machine plant, the Orsha machine-tool construction plant 'Krasny borets'
that produced the country's best planogrinding machines, the Gomel machine-tool
construction and machine assembly plant and the Baranovichy automatic
transfer line plant. The tool-making industry enterprises included the
Minsk, Kobrin and Orsha tool-making plants and the intersectional production
plants, such as the Gomel plant 'Gidroprivod' and the founding plant,
as well as the Volkovysk foundry equipment plant.
Belorussia was the Union's only supplier of broaching, abrasive cutting,
milling cutting, balancing machines and tool grinders for multi-edged
metal cutting tools. They also produced numeric programmed control machines
and numeric indication machines. The Pinsk foundry equipment and forge-and-press
transfer line plants and the Grodno lathe chucks plant started production
in 1970s. They developed over 100 new machines and a huge number of tools
and equipment. Here are the machine-tool construction data. In 1960 they
produced 16.8 thousand metal-cutting tools, in 1970 they manufactured
27.6 thousand of them, in 1980 29.7 thousand of the tools were produced,
in 1985 their output totaled 22.3 thousand, while in 1986 they manufactured
20.3 thousand. Belorussia produced every ninth metal-cutting tool in the
Union and ranked third in the country as for the output of the tools.
It is not an exaggeration to say that refrigerators of the Minsk plant
'Atlant' found a ready market all over the world.
Instrument making was one of the most promising branches of machine building
and metal working. It specialized in the output of computer aids, optical
and mechanical instruments and devices, radio and electrical measuring
instruments. The major enterprises were the Minsk computer plant and the
instrument making plant, the electromechanical plant in Brest, the plant
producing devices to prepare source information in Mogilev, the watch
plant in Minsk, the plant manufacturing electrical measuring instruments
in Vitebsk and the measuring instrument plant in Gomel.
Radio manufacturing that specialized in producing tools of radio and wire
communication, radio sets, TV sets and special manufacturing equipment
was developing at a quick pace. The latest models of Belorussian TV sets
were adjusted to the Soviet, European or American standard. In 1970s Belorussian
TV sets were awarded at different exhibitions, including international
ones, with a gold medal, 12 silver and 28 bronze medals. The produce was
exported to over 30 countries in the world, among them Algeria, Afghanistan,
Belgium, Hungary, Great Britain, Greece, Iran, the People's Republic of
Bulgaria, Poland, Turkey and Czechoslovakia.
Chemical and petrochemical industry that specialized chiefly in producing
mineral fertilizers and their primary products, chemical fibers and filaments,
plastic and synthetic resins, car tires, rubber footwear and household
chemicals was advancing intensively in 1970s and 1980s. The raw materials
base of BSSR chemical and petrochemical industry is deposits of potassium
salts, sodium chloride, oil and associated gas explored in Belarus. The
major enterprises of the industry are 'Bobruiskshina', 'Belaruskaliy',
'Polimir', the production association 'Azot' in Grodno, artificial fibre
plants in Mogilev and Svetlogorsk, rubber goods plants in Bobruisk and
Krichev, the plastic goods plant in Borisov, the glass fibre plant in
Polotsk, the paint and vanish plant in Lida and the household chemicals
plant in Brest. There were six production associations that manufactured
77.4 per cent of the gross production of this branch of industry in the
BSSR.
The chemical and petrochemical enterprises exercised close economic cooperation
with each other. The oil-processing plant in Novopolotsk produced paraxilol
which was used at the association 'Khimvolokno' in Mogilev to manufacture
lavsan and benzol. The Grodno association 'Azot' used lavsan and benzol
to produce caprolactam. Many of the solvents produced by the oil-processing
plant in Novopolotsk were used at the paint and vanish plants of the republic.
The association 'Polimir' in Novopolotsk, for example, manufactured 40
per cent of the Union's output of high-quality polyacrylic fibre nitron
and nitrile acrylic acid and 20 per cent of polyethylene. The employees
of the enterprise were a universally recognized leader in the branch,
it concerned both output volume increase and enhancement of production
efficiency.
Electronic industry was developed intensively in the republic, mainly
at the Minsk computing machinery production association and the plant
'Integral'. Bearing industry was developed, too, it was concentrated in
Minsk and Gomel and produced over 14 per cent of the Union's output. Electro-technical
industry advanced as well, it numbered 22 enterprises, the major ones
being the electro-technical plant in Minsk, the cable plant in Mogilev,
the plant 'Avtoprivod' in Shchuchin, the electric bulb plant in Brest,
the electric goods plant in Lida, the electrical equipment plant in Gomel,
the Molodechno plant of power semi-conductor valves, the electric installation
plant in Minsk and the electro-technical plant in Gomel. Instrument making
industry was developed, too. Its produce was exported to over 7 countries.
Other developed industries were mineral fertilizers production with every
second ton of potash fertilizers mined in Soligorsk and every third ton
of nitric fertilizers mined in Grodno; radio industry, chemical and petrochemical
industry. The oil-processing plants in Novopolotsk and Mozyr ramped up
their facilities.
Over 90 new enterprises were built in the republic, the facilities of
many operating plants and factories were increased in ten years' period,
from 1976 to 1985. After the Belorussian metallurgical plant in Zhodino
started to operate in 1984, there emerged a new branch of industrial production,
namely iron industry. Many types of rolled metal and half-finished products
produced by the plant were delivered to other metallurgy enterprises of
the country.
The Belorussian economic region had at its disposal the necessary fuel
and energy resources, up-to-date mechanical engineering and metal-working,
efficient agriculture, advanced science and culture, and what is most
important, highly skilled personnel. Belarus' economy was a major territorial
production complex in its structure which was characterized by definite
specialization in the division of labor in the USSR and by the composite
nature of its economy. Belarus took the lead in the world due to many
characteristics and standards of its production.
When we describe the economic development of Belarus that could be literally
called economic miracle as the republic really prospered at the time,
we have to refer to the past mainly because almost all of these achievements
are in the annals of history today. A leading Union republic once, Belarus
turned into one of the many countries characterized by developing economy,
galloping inflation and the collective management of agriculture that
is on its last legs. Plants work wearing themselves out under extremely
unfavorable economic conditions but warehouses and grounds are more and
more overstocked with their produce. Over 50 thousand tractors blocked
up the roads and passages between workshops at the Minsk tractor plant
and there is a whole armada of them on the warehouse ground. Most of the
new tractors do not have accessories and components due to the broken
integration relations between enterprises of the former USSR. Accordingly,
the Minsk Automobile Plant, for example, had to develop the manufacture
of buses urgently. One should say the plant personnel coped with the task
successfully.
Another reason for the plants to be overstocked with their produce is
the excessive price that ruined kolkhozes cannot afford. The association
'Gomselmash' producing harvesting machines is very notable in this respect.
The machines are universal, which distinguishes them from many foreign
analogues, but very metal- and labor-intensive and poorly suited for our
barely passable fields and meadows and, besides, they are very expensive.
Thus kolkhozes, as far as possible, acquire more willingly light, easy-to-use
and cheaper German machinery than domestic mastodons. Bicycles and motorcycles
of the Minsk motorcycle and bicycle plant sell very badly. The poor and
ruined home customer stopped buying the produce of the plant as people
cannot afford a bicycle at the price, not to speak about a motorcycle
that has to be filled up. By the way, the price is much lower in dollar
equivalent than it used to be, but salaries… A few developing countries
such as Vietnam, Egypt and some others support the sales of motorcycles
of the plant for the time being.
Most plants have to manufacture for stock. They have no other way out
but the one well-tried, i.e. they have to raise prices for their produce
to make both ends meet. Who can afford to buy it, bearing in mind the
universal poverty and even misery? Most of our enterprises do not have
any access to world markets. The produce competitiveness of Belarusian
enterprises leaves much to be desired in many cases, while our people
and poor kolkhozes and sovkhozes cannot afford to buy quality things and
expensive machinery. This is a kind of a catch-22 situation… Agricultural
enterprises have some hopes for state credits and lease but this does
not alter the general situation.
It took about 10 or 15 years for Belarus to turn from an exporter republic
into an importing one, blocked up with poor quality imported goods. It
turned into a real trouble when the tenth wave of low-standard goods from
all over the world, even from distant China, overflowed the republic.
Domestic manufactured products, foodstuffs and other produce that are
next best to the imported ones in many respects do not have the call with
the population. State commerce is flowed over with foreign goods. This
trouble added to all other economic troubles…
It should be noted that Belorussia's agriculture developed in a complicated
and conflicting way. The efforts to increase industrial output and labor
productivity, to enhance the quality of the produce and speed-up scientific
and technical progress, undoubtedly, had definite results. The dominance
of Belorussia's industry within the Union economic complex testified to
that.
However, the republic's achievements could have been more significant
and substantial. The negative trends typical for the whole of economic
and political public life, oversights and mistakes were a serious obstacle
in the process of production intensification, increase of its efficiency
and adoption of scientific and technical achievements. Alienation of a
considerable number of working population from political power, from property
and from social and spiritual values became extremely widespread. Social
apathy gained strength. On the other hand, there was governing machinery
interests' isolation, and a definite stand that defended stagnation and
generated more and more new arguments against reforms in the country's
economy was taken. Thus, there emerged a real conflict defined by K. Marx
at one time as a 'contradiction between reality and management principles'.
The command style of party leadership, concentration of leading functions
within the system of party bodies, decline in responsibility for implementation
of decisions taken, lack of coordination between word and deed and weakening
links with the working population brought about social crisis.
The analysis of reasons for negative tendencies and processes shows that
they form a definite system of interdependencies and interconnections
that make up a single hampering mechanism. To overcome the barrier as
quickly as possible, it is necessary to reject power monopoly, to change
manpower policy drastically by nominating initiative people to the governing
bodies who would do work in a resolute and bold manner and who could carry
on a dialogue with the masses and live for the sake of their needs and
requirements without losing contact with people, and carry out total democratization
of production control. In general, a number of reforms aimed to improve
the situation both in industry and national economy of the republic had
to be performed. Unfortunately, they were not, as a result we have the
present state of affairs in economic and social spheres today…
The things that happened to Belarus' highly developed industry literally
shock one. The republic that was universally recognized as one of the
leading in the former USSR languishes in poverty now. Thus, of August
1, 2003 4584 enterprises, or 40.5 per cent of the general number, were
thought to be unprofitable. The amount of losses totaled 408.1 billion
rubles (from January to July of 2002 the amount was 324.5 billion). The
number of unprofitable enterprises in Brest region reached 38 per cent,
in Vitebsk region it was 51.2 per cent, in Gomel region - 47.8 per cent,
in Grodno region - 36.6 per cent, in Minsk region - 47.9 per cent and
in Mogilev region 51 per cent.
As of January 1 2003 4544 enterprises, or 40.1 per cent of their total
number, did not have any owner's working assets, while 2511 enterprises,
or 22.1 per cent of the total number, had owner's working assets less
than the standard required. 620 industrial enterprises, or 26.3 per cent
of their total number, had owner's working assets less than the standard
required, 193 of them were machine building and metal working enterprises,
128 of them were food industry enterprises, 101 were enterprises of timber,
woodworking and pulp and paper industries and 92 were enterprises of light
industry.
Energy supply arrears as of August 1, 2003, including internal accounts,
totaled 3.3 trillion rubles, with domestic accounts accounting for 90.2
per cent of all energy supply arrears, including 44.2 per cent for natural
gas and 42.5 per cent for electrical power. Total overdue arrears as of
August 1, 2003 made up 5 trillion rubles and increased by 3 per cent as
compared to the beginning of the year, while consumer prices increased
by 16.2 per cent during the same period.
The reasons seemed to have been found out, so it was time to eliminate
them. Contrary to the public statements that things are good in the country,
much better than they were in Russia, that we managed to keep our industry,
to speed up production and so on, the true situation was the other way
round. I think present day Belarusian industry ranks one of the last in
Europe. Even our best quality goods are unable to rival with foreign ones.
It is the most vital question where to take means to create new industry.
If we do not solve the question we are doomed to poverty and misery. The
issue of paramount importance is investments. Will an oligarch turn up
or will the country itself be able to invest money in its economy? If
so, we are going to face a breakthrough for better life. If not, the country
will collapse and inevitably get completely dependent on stronger countries.
When we speak about industrial decline, we have to state that political
and economic policies were defined in the wrong way, which brought about
frontal crisis not only in economy, but in all spheres of life of the
society. Where is the way out? If they overcome at least some of the problems,
it would enable the republic to resolve the economic deadlock. Drastic
and resolute measures are necessary, e.g. complementary investments into
manufacture and overcoming world isolation of the republic. One wants
to believe we are going to solve the problems in several years' time.
The Belarusians undoubtedly deserve a better lot after so many centuries
of humiliation, grief and offence.
CHAPTER XII
EDUCATION IS THE FUTURE OF THE NATION
We entered the third millennium that requires from people, the young
ones in the first turn, those who are thought to be the country's future,
up-to-date knowledge, the ability to be autonomous, to pattern their behavior
in the world that is changing rapidly, to set tasks and , what is most
important, to be able to solve them efficiently. Attitude to education,
especially to higher education, is changing all over the world nowadays.
The stance that it is exactly education that is going to be the most significant
factor of progress in the new millennium gains a foothold. These requirements
are brought forward by modern manufacture and life itself. It is important
to be able not only to read and write grammatically and correctly, but
to learn solidly the computer, legal, economic and ecological competence,
too. The country's intellectual resources are increasing extremely quickly,
exponentially.
In order to be really fruitful and effective, education should be grounded
upon the basis common for teachers and students alike. Religion played
the role of this basis for many thousand years. It was accepted equally
and without any shadow of doubt by the whole of society, regardless of
their age, class, status and sex. Nowadays religion no more plays the
role of the cementing basis in society due to a number of objective and
subjective reasons. We may come across quite many believers, though. I
class myself as one of them, by the way. Education, as a result, devoid
of its firm moral basis in the form of religion, turned into purely dehumanized
process involving quantitative piling of a store of knowledge. People
possess a lot of knowledge in different spheres that are even impossible
to enumerate, including philosophy which is the cream of human wisdom,
but very few ponder and, moreover, are aware of the underlying processes
of human existence and the meaning of life as it was understood literally
by billions of those people who lived and live on the Earth. What is more
important and what principles should one follow, and what basic landmarks
should one be guided by?
Sooner or later every intelligent man faces the question of what he is
and what a human being in general is, what is his place and predestination
in life, what he should do in the first turn and, most importantly, for
what purpose, and what expects him in the near and more distant future…
It is evident that not only the youth live by hopes. Hope, just like a
dream, is something a human being is unable to exist without. In my opinion,
the answers to the questions above should make the basis of up-to-date
education.
I may be objected there was and there is no religious doctrine common
to all earth's inhabitants, as well as there is no teaching of morality,
with distinctive features of its own. There is no universal wisdom whose
authorship would belong to one particular man or a particular nation,
but for Bible, though its teaching is often neglected and forgotten by
people in the fuss of everyday life. There were many of those who tried
to teach the world kindness, justice and wisdom as they understood them.
They were Krishna, Socrates, Pythagor, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, Galileo,
Kiryll Turovsky, Russo, Kant, Rerikh, Chernyshevskiy, Lev Tolstoy, K.
Marx and V. Lenin… None of them, though, managed to excel the eternal
truths set forth briefly and clearly in the Holy Scripture. I have always
believed in God and was convinced that a human being without God in his
soul is just a physical form. Really, it is in God's power that even a
hair falls out of a person's head. This spark always smoldered in my soul
and flared up brighter with the time.
I sympathize deeply with Christian dispensation that teach people kindness,
harmony, love and respect for our neighbor and aversion for wealth, though
the ideas may seem a bit maximalist. 'Do not collect riches on the earth
where moth and rust destroy them and where thieves undermine and steal
but collect riches in the sky where neither moth nor rust destroy them
and where thieves neither undermine nor steal. For where your riches are,
there your heart would be. Isn't it true? How can one object? No one can
serve two masters at a time, for he would either hate one and love the
other, or he would take pains to serve one and would fail to take care
of the other. You cannot serve God and mammon at a time. Therefore I say
to you: do not worry about your food and drink and about the clothes to
cover your body. Have a look at the birds in the sky. They do not sow,
do not reap and do not collect harvest into granary, their God feeds them.
Do you think to be better than birds? Which of you can grow at least an
ell higher in your worries? Why care about clothes? Do not care and do
not worry about your food or drink and about your clothes. Let pagans
care and worry, because your God knows you have these needs… Look for
the Kingdom and its truth, the rest will add. Thus, do not care about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will care about itself, everyone should have his
own cares.' These were God's words. Jesus liked to mention, as an example
of madness, a man who accumulated a lot of wealth for many years ahead
in his granaries and died before he managed to use the property.
It goes without saying we should not understand everything said by Jesus
literally, word for word. The world has changed and there are other values
that rule it. No one wishes to offer his right cheek after he was slapped
on the left one, just like he does not wish to love his enemies. No one
is willing to give away his undershirt after they take off his shirt.
A human being today should also have some riches, i.e. some supply of
food and clothes. We should think about the future, too. These things
are not essential, though, but spiritual wealth is… Isn't it blasphemous
and inhuman to grow fat and rich outrageously while the overwhelming majority
of your fellow countrymen live in poverty, to fiddle while Rome burns
and, similar to Troyekurov from Pushkin's novel 'Dubrovsky' (it was established
that Dubrovsky's prototype was our fellow countryman, a landowner of modest
means Ostrovsky from Igumenshchina) who caRed much more about his kennels
than about his subject peasants.
There are enduring values in the sermons of Christ. 'Do not judge, and
you will not be judged. Forgive, and you will be forgiven… You should
give rather than take. The one who elevates himself will be humiliated,
while the one who humbles himself will be elevated. Be merciful, just
like God is… ' Has anyone been able to contest the truths during the two
thousand years Christianity existed? Let's take the major dispensation
from Christ's Sermon on the Mount that says 'do not kill, do not steal
and do not crave for your neighbor's wife'… If only people took any notice
of them!
I can't but remember once again my home village Rudna and its ordinary
people who seem to be akin to the poorest inhabitants of the ancient East
where Christ lived and preached. They lived more or less in accordance
with Christ's commandments from time immemorial. Theft, disrespect of
each other and, moreover, disrespect of God, was considered a grave sin.
No one even dared to use an axe or a scythe on a holy day Sunday or on
some religious feast. These traditions and beliefs of the nation which
took shape for centuries were ruined, defiled and forbidden by Bolsheviks
who imagined themselves to be local idols and to be even more elevated
than God is. Churches were destroyed and shrines were desecrated, while
one's neighbor's life was thought to be worthless. Human blood became
similar to water and it became the custom and the rule to shed floods
of it. So didn't divine retribution catch Bolsheviks? Some seven decades
passed, an instant in the tables of history, and Bolsheviks were washed
away by a new wave, the former masters of life vanished as if they were
dust. Their new teaching of Leninism that was considered 'correct, inviolable
and everlasting' not long ago went to rack and ruin.
It seems to me in this respect that it is not enough that every man of
culture should know Bible. Education itself should be based on the main
propositions of Bible. In other words, there should be some pivot as the
foundation of teaching and studying every subject and discipline. We should
understand why we study this or that subject or discipline, what the subject
is meant for and whether the humankind makes use of its basic laws for
the benefit or to the detriment, and whether the laws give rise to constructive
or destructive forces?
It is also absolutely clear that one should bone up on some science being
guided by good intentions, love and a keen interest in the subject under
study. In order to love and respect the subject, one should make a correct
choice of his profession, so that he could be led by his vocation, not
vice versa… So far as religion in modern society has lost its prerogative
positions of uniting and joining people due to many reasons, we need to
have something to substitute it. This substitute may and should be education
which is a unity of knowledgeable and intelligent people holding the same
views, humanists and patriots like those trained at International Humanitarian
and Economic Institute and other higher and secondary special educational
establishments of the republic, as well as colleges, gymnasiums and schools.
This is dictated by present-day reality and suggested by many centuries
of educational system development.
It would be not quite right, to put it mildly, to maintain that pre-revolutionary
Belarus was entirely illiterate, dim and backward. It is considered that
about 75 per cent of its population was illiterate. The whole of the world
at the time could not boast its education, so Belarus looked quite in
line against the general background in this respect. Moreover, if Russia
ranked fourth in the world as for its industrial development level before
World War I, it now ranks approximately 60th, though its population is
generally literate. The independent Belarus ranks even lower…
Machinery at plants and factories was rather perfect for the time. Otherwise
the country would not have been one of the four most developed ones. Its
administrative and executive bodies were competent and, what is most important,
professional, at least they were able to solve problems quickly, without
the present-day multistage bureaucratic runaround. You should just try
to register sole proprietorship or to solve even an insignificant issue
without any official circumlocution today. There are legends going about
the patriotism and honesty of officials of all ranks and especially of
the merchants in tsarist Russia.
Let's take later period as an example. Today our old mothers and grandmothers
who finished four classes before the war could leave in the dust a present
pupil of the 10th form. It means teachers worked much better at the time,
while a pupil's mind was not filled with a lot of useless subjects of
minor importance. It is no wonder they talk today about the need to have
the so-called directed education, i.e. if a child has a gift for exact
sciences let him specialize in this direction, if he is more keen on history,
literature and language, let him specialize in the humanitarian area.
In 1950s UNESCO ranked the USSR the third in the world in education sphere,
while the Russia of today ranks approximately 80th. Belarus does not rank
any higher in the list. According to the so-called human potential development
index that accounts for basic social indicators, Belarus ranks 57th in
the list of 174 countries that is given in the annual report of the UN
Development Program. With an allowance for many statistical data including
income level per head, life expectancy, public health availability and,
most importantly, education system arrangement and literacy level of its
people, Belarus is assigned a place among countries with average development.
The nearest neighbor of Belarus is Cuba that ranks 56th, Russia ranks
62nd, while Ukraine ranks only 78th. The list is headed by Canada, Norway,
the USA and Austria.
Ulyanov said in his time that Bolsheviks elevated the teacher to the height
he could never be to in tsarist Russia. They really 'elevated' the teacher…
Today a teacher who gets scanty salary has to drag out a miserable existence.
He is driven into a corner by permanent want and problems… The money is
not enough even for more or less decent existence, not to mention more
or less civilized life. A teacher of a rural school in tsarist Russia
was paid 30 or 40 rubles a month, while a teacher in urban schools and
gymnasiums received even more. The sum was equal to three or four minimums
of subsistence and was enough to buy 30 poods of wheat. How can the present-day
teacher bring up patriots of their country if he faces the attitude of
the kind to himself? The tragedy of the nation is evident today. Tomorrow
it may turn even into a bigger trouble.
A system of educational establishments with no single governing body and
no connections between them emerged in Belarus by the beginning of XIX
century. The range of different systems enabled the one who had wish and
possibility, to get education that answered standards of knowledge in
the previous centuries, the education process being in Polish, Russian,
French or German languages. Before the school reform of 1803-1804 there
were about 130 primary, 33 secondary and incomplete secondary schools,
a considerable number of Jewish religious schools and 40 schools of different
Catholic orders in Belarus. The total number of pupils did not exceed
4 thousand people at the end of XVIII century. School education was primarily
available to children of the gentry, the clergy and prosperous townspeople.
Those peasants who had some savings and kept them carefully could give
their children primary education in a parish school and in many cases
they hired private teachers if those peasants understood the importance
of educating their children.
At the beginning of XIX century education reform was carried out in Russia.
The Ministry of Public Education was set up in 1802 for the first time
in Russia's history. The European part of the country was divided into
six educational districts, each headed by an administrator appointed by
Tsar. Belorussian provinces became part of Vilensky educational district
headed by magnate A. Chartoriysky. The university in Vilno was educational,
methodological and administrative center of the district. In the course
of the reform in Belarus the number of circular secondary schools, as
well as the number of their pupils, grew while the number of monastery
schools declined. Natural history subjects took a considerable place in
the academic curriculum. Girl's education was gradually receiving recognition.
Nevertheless, Catholic educational establishments continued to occupy
a significant part in the school education system of Belarus. In 1812-1820
there functioned the Polotsk Jesuitical academy which was a center of
a special Jesuitical educational district. The educational establishments
in Belarus, that were part of the academy, numbered 700 pupils, i.e. over
20 per cent of the total number of pupils in gymnasiums and schools.
There were 38 district schools (including 23 monastery schools), 4 gymnasiums
and over 100 parish schools in the late 1820s in Belarus. The majority
of their pupils were noblemen. They were 84 per cent of the total number
of pupils at schools and gymnasiums and almost 50 per cent at parish schools.
After the Decembrist uprising in 1825 and the rising in Belarus in 1830-1831
the education system was reorganized, the reorganization followed the
path of intensifying such reactionary principles as orthodoxy, autocracy
and national spirit. Russianization policy, great-power negation of Belarusian
language ethnic independence and closing of the university in Vilno in
1832 were the embodiment of the principles. The Vilensky educational district
was temporarily eliminated until 1850.
At the beginning of 1850 there were 576 educational establishments, including
one higher educational establishment that was Gory-Goretsky agricultural
school which was set up in 1840 and acquired the status of an institute
in 1848, 12 secondary schools, 45 incomplete secondary schools, 45 girl's
schools, both state and private and over 400 primary schools, among them
state, departmental and private ones, on the territory which is present-day
Belarus now. About 16.5 thousand pupils studied at the schools in the
late 1850s and the early 1860s.
Educational establishments of different departments were placed under
the authority of the Ministry of Public Education. District schools of
the nobility were done away with in western provinces. Rural primary schools
turned into public schools and two-year primary schools. Educational establishments
of lower level in towns turned into town schools. Boy's gymnasiums were
divided into two types - classical and non-classical. It was allowed to
set up girl's seven-year gymnasiums in towns with a small number of the
population.
School reform results in Belarus were less significant than those in central
provinces of Russia. The province rebelled. Neighboring Poland that was
divided more than once did not give a moment's rest. Uprisings broke out,
the response to them being strengthening of the reactionary regime, especially
after the disturbances of 1863-1864 were suppressed. Gory-Goretsky agricultural
institute, Novogrudok gymnasium, Svisloch and Molodechno gymnasiums were
closed in 1864 as their students participated in the uprising. At the
end of XIX century there were 13 gymnasiums, over 20 district schools
and 1400 primary schools in Belarus. The total number of the students
at all schools (except private ones) did not exceed 160 thousand. At the
turn of XIX-XX centuries the backwardness of popular schooling became
evident. It put the brakes on economic progress. From 1900 to 1914 the
number of primary and secondary schools of all types, including private
ones, in the Vilensky educational district increased from 6297 to 7593,
while the number of their pupils grew from 248 thousand to 490 thousand.
There were 88 secondary educational establishments at the time.
World War I, the revolution and violent spreading of Bolshevist power
threw the public educational system in the republic far back. They had
to start a lot of things all over again. In the first years of the Soviet
power, Soviet labor schools uniform for all sections of the population,
were set up. There were schools of the first stage with a five-year term
of study and schools of the second stage with a four-year term of study.
Primary and seven-year schools were established in 1922, nine-year schools
were set up in 1926 and secondary schools were established in 1931. The
school became uniform, i.e. secondary school was divided into primary,
incomplete secondary with a seven-year term of study and secondary with
a ten-year term of study. It was primary education that was compulsory
at first, before the Great Patriotic War incomplete secondary education
turned into compulsory, later secondary education was made compulsory
for the country's population, though one had to pay for it up till 1956.
We should give the Soviet power its due as it worried about the education
of its citizens and did a lot in this direction. The current law 'On education
in the Republic of Belarus' of 1991 determines fundamental education with
a nine-year term of study as compulsory.
In the 1926-1927 school year there were 4190 schools that taught subjects
in Belorussian, which was 85 per cent of the total number of schools,
467 schools taught subjects in Russian, 147 schools taught subjects in
Jewish an132 schools - in Polish. They worked hard in Belarus to ensure
the opportunity to be educated in their mother tongue for workers of all
nationalities. Most primary schools, a number of seven-year schools and
technical secondary schools, as well as some higher educational establishments
taught subjects in Belarusian. People's Commissars of Education in the
BSSR V.M. Ignatovsky and A.V. Balitsky made an outstanding contribution
to the establishment of the Belorussian school.
As we can see, they paid a lot of attention to national attributes, including
education and language, in the first years of the Soviet power. The policy
of the Russian empire (I have to use the term again as the imperialism
of Russia until 1991 bore evident and increasing signs) was aimed at autonomy
and more respected attitude to 'brotherly' republics.
Everything turned upside down very quickly, starting with 1932 as if somebody
woke up in the morning and thought, 'What for is all this?' Schools with
subjects taught in Polish and Jewish were closed quickly, their staff
was infrequently declared to be enemies of the people, saboteurs and spies.
In Belorussian schools subjects started to be taught in the language of
their Russian 'big brother'. Another reform of the Belorussian language
was going on. 'Tarashkevitsa' (after the initiator of the previous reform,
the head of the society of Belorussian school, an academician of the Academy
of Sciences of Belarus B.A. Tarashkevich) was driven away, which could
be justified to a certain extent, as it is characteristic of the language,
like of all other public categories, to improve, develop and be simplified.
It has been calculated, for example, that if they used the hard sign in
the 50 volumes of L. Tolstoy's works, it would take up 300 pages. The
soft sign would require no less place if it was still spelled in Belorussian…
We observe the results of those past events today. I should have written
the lines in my native tongue, but I am writing them in Russian, instead…
They talk and debate a lot of late about the need to reform secondary
and primary school. It goes without saying the reform is brewing but is
there any point to reform right now? Who is going to carry it out? Should
it be the hard-up teacher? He is not ready at the moment, yet the reform
should undoubtedly be carried out by the teaching staff of schools. There
remains the way that was tested more than once, i.e. the Ministry of Education
would issue heaps of directions to regional administrations, and they
in their turn would redirect them to district public education authorities.
The result is known beforehand. They are going to fail. The expected positive
result is unlikely, for the reformer personnel are not trained. One might
agree with definite items of the reform, nevertheless, there is a doubt
whether we need a twelve-year school system. Is there any pressure to
adopt western experience? We may burn our fingers if we resort to borrowing
unskillfully. I am convinced this is the case we should 're-invent our
own wheel'. The matter is so delicate we'd better not act on impulse.
We probably need first to carry out some experiment and only afterwards,
after we see its outcome, we may decide what way school should be reformed.
It is goes without saying that historically established national traditions
play an important part in education. Any unjustified change of the traditions
has negative consequences, as a rule. Should we really copy the structure
of the secondary school in Germany where they have a long-established
tradition to enable the youth to obtain professional training as early
as possible and where access to higher education was strictly limited
for the majority of pupils? The so-called fundamental school was meant
for this majority. The second level in the form of the so-called lyceum
classes was established for those who planned to enter a higher educational
establishment. In our country they also try to divide school into two
levels, i.e. ten-year fundamental school and two upper lyceum classes
to prepare pupils to enter higher educational establishments. They suggest
that lyceum classes should be separate from the fundamental school.
This contradicts the historically established structure of the national
school that enabled all pupils to receive full-fledged secondary education
and that corresponded fully to the current global tendency of universal
education.
We are offered to adopt 12-year education at the secondary school, with
one class added to the bottom level, the so-called preschool class. They
assert that 12-year education will enable to eliminate overload of pupils.
The 12-year school is not going to improve anything, neither will it eliminate
overload of pupils. The transition from fundamental 9-year school to 10-year
education will not improve the quality of comprehensive training of pupils;
it will remain on the same level. Only those pupils who will manage to
get into the so-called lyceum classes will benefit from 12-year education.
They will really have an extra year to expand and broaden their knowledge.
There is another problem we may face. Fundamental school leavers will
be 16 years old. Bearing in mind the admission to vocational schools is
reduced today, they are going to remain beyond the reach of pedagogical
influence. What is going to happen to these teenagers then? Is this likely
to bring about crime increase in the juvenile environment? In short, there
are many questions but, unfortunately, there are no well-reasoned answers
to them.
The situation in the higher school in our country is far from being the
best one. The teaching staff, i.e. professors and higher school lecturers,
is in great distress. In Soviet times an associate professor was paid
320 rubles while a professor was paid 420 rubles which was a decent sum
of money. At the same time, they had to do their best and to work flat
out, which I know from my own experience. The work of a teacher at a higher
educational establishment was prestigious, as well as noble and rewarding.
Officials sought to educate their children in prestigious institutes and
universities. This circumstance was also of no small importance, it did
not allow one to relax, to some extent. There was professional duty and
serious responsibility. Like any other teacher, I could not come to a
lecture or a seminar unprepared. I worked, as they said at the time, at
the chief sub-department of the Belorussian State University. The sub-department
was headed by Doctor of Philosophy, the corresponding member of the BSSR
Academy of Sciences Professor V.M. Sikorsky. We respected Vsevolod Mikhailovich
and, to be quite frank, were rather afraid of him. There are hardly any
scholars of his level today…
There worked about ten more people at the sub-department who had doctor's
degree, professors, who were mainly expert scholars and pedagogues. They
supported their young colleagues, helped them about their work, pointed
tactfully to their methodological mistakes in conducting lessons and gave
advice and leadership of scientific work. One could count on their support
about everything. I realized later that they thought about the future,
brought up successors for themselves and worried about their young colleagues.
Social science sub-departments, naturally, were advocates of the communist
regime. It was practically impossible to introduce something new into
the courses we gave, among them CPSU History, Marxist-Leninist philosophy,
political economy of socialism and USSR History. Lectures on the disciplines
turned into voicing dogmata, quotations of classics, resolutions of CPSU
congresses, Politburo resolutions and speeches of General Secretaries.
Any digression and invention meant you were under suspicion of the appropriate
authorities who kept you under their close surveillance. The incidents
happened more than once… Entirely different things happened in actual
life, it was evident even to a common collective farmer or a worker. Who
needed the practice of the kind? Deception and brainwash of the people,
substitution of truths and values when one had to call black white and
vice versa resulted in the outcome we faced a decade ago…
The teaching staff kept silent as most every person was afraid to lose
his job and risk their family. I remember that shortly before the USSR
disintegration professors, associate professors and teachers had to confirm
their professional qualifications at district party committees. It looked
like humiliation. The process was headed by the chief of the district
committee department. Party functionaries who were often our former students
sat at the table covered with red calico and looked down on us. They did
not treat us as equal. They were assessing our compliance with the profession
and could make any decision. We had to endure everything. Indeed, the
communist power, as if it had a presentiment about its end, took the most
abnormal and wild decisions and actions.
Today one can see a lot of changes in the higher school system. It is
natural there has been a change of generations, younger and more energetic
people came to teach students but I would not say they are more talented
teachers. People of my generation who are over fifty treat their work
with more responsibility. They infrequently work for nothing which has
always been a distinctive feature of our intelligentsia. Present-day young
teachers are mainly rationalist. They wish to gain success both in science
and in the teaching career hastily, they want to gain everything at once,
though no one managed this on the thorny path of science…
In recent years we may see not even undistinguished people but sheer mediocrities
who come to pursue the teaching career. Structural organization departments
of higher educational establishments, as well as the establishments themselves,
are sometimes headed by incompetent people with a low standard of professional
training and culture. It is a widely known fact that education is the
future of the nation. The trouble is that material security of the teaching
staff leaves much to be desired. A police sergeant, for example, is paid
the same salary as a professor who works in a higher educational establishment.
The need to carry out a staffing reform in education system, including
higher school, in order to have more intellectual and honest people as
its staff, is brewing.
I am convinced the notion 'education' is closely connected with the category
of culture. It is clear that upbringing constitutes the fundamental element
of culture in general and of a cultured man. A man with good upbringing
will be a man of culture. It mean that well-brought-up implies cultured.
I think the foundations of upbringing are laid down in the family. If
one of the parents in the family went through the school of upbringing
in his or her time, they would have something to pass on to their children…
I remember my parents implanting in my mind since very childhood the need
to be honest, truthful, to respect the elders, to greet an older person
first. These are common truths but they should enter our mind from the
cradle. I realize now that my parents based the upbringing process on
Christian dispensation, even being unaware of this. They were taught by
their parents in their time, they taught us and we, in our turn, teach
our children.
Unfortunately, we may observe entirely different things if we have a look
at the present-day youth. Nearly every young person smokes, including
girls, who seem to smoke even more than boys. This must be all the rage
now, yet, it is their own business. Meanwhile, cigarettes are not cheap.
Many young people choose to smoke expensive ones, worth about a thousand
rubles a packet. At the same time, clothes of many students are far from
being neat, clean and fresh. A student cannot afford to buy a new shirt
that costs as much as four or five packets of cigarettes. Very often young
people react to criticism intensely, with an insult. Moreover, an angry
parent may ring and ask why we infringe upon their children's rights and
dare reprimand them. The parents say it is their privilege and their own
right. How can such a parent be responded? We may only pity him… I think
the one who said first that clothes count for first impressions only was
not quite right. Clothes are also an attribute of a cultured person.
The things that seem to be trifle at first sight and ordinary everyday
situations mould not only a person's character but also the culture of
the would be member of administrative staff, a manager and a head. How
can everyone be highly cultured, if everything around us ranging from
the family as a social 'cell' to the state itself and the life of its
population, requires perfection, improvement and change… We brag about
being situated in the very center of Europe. Unfortunately, to be situated
in the center and to be the center is far from being the same. We have
to do a lot to reach the standards we had a decade ago, not to mention
the leading position on the global arena.
I think it would be unjust not to mention such a significant stage in
my life and the life of the whole of my team as establishment of International
Humanitarian and Economic Institute. In 1994 I managed to jump onto the
step of the train named 'Higher education'. Thanks the foresight, I was
lucky to choose the correct and noble activity. All in all, there are
12 private higher educational establishments, the number of their students
is growing every year and exceeds 30 thousand at present. In state higher
educational establishments the number reaches 190 thousand. This number
tends to grow steadily, too, but we should not fail to take into consideration
that paid education at such institutes and universities is gaining in
scope year after year, so in some of them half of the total number of
students get their education on a paid basis.
What is International Humanitarian and Economic Institute like today?
Over 5.5 thousand students study at the higher educational establishment.
There work about 220 lecturers and senior lecturers, there is also auxiliary
staff. All in all there are almost six thousand people who work and study
at the Institute. The IHEI team is comprised of people holding the same
views and united by a common idea to give high quality education to youth
and to bring up true patriots of their country.
We secured the annual full-fledged admission to the institute, selected
and placed our personnel in a sound way. We also created and strengthened
our equipment and facilities. The training is computerized; lecture rooms
are equipped with audio and video equipment. All departments have their
computer classes. Dean's offices and sub-departments are equipped with
copying machines and computers, too. We have also established financial
and economic structure of the institute. The library of the institute
numbers about 35 thousand editions. There prevail books on economy and
legal literature, as most students of IHEI study jurisprudence and economics
as their chief subjects. Among the library readers there are both students
of our institute and those from other higher educational establishments
in Minsk.
Scientific work is paid much attention to at the institute. It is a well-known
fact that the way to serious science starts in a person's university years.
IHEI initiated annual scientific student conferences with students of
other educational establishments of the republic as their participants.
Many papers are notable for their high degree of researching problems.
They were estimated at their true worth by competent commissions with
major academics of Belarus as their members. It will not take long before
International Humanitarian and Economic Institute develops scientific
schools of its own.
We have a publishing house that issued tens of thousand copies of scientific
literature, teaching and methodological aids, as well as other types of
literature. As experts of International Personnel Academy estimated, our
teaching aids were found to be one of the best at different contests.
The teaching staff and the publishing house were set the task to issue
learning aids for every course given at the institute.
It is the indisputable achievement of the leadership and the whole of
the staff of IHEI that the institute gained international recognition
of the International Personnel Academy accredited by UNESCO and the Council
of Europe. This enables our graduates to receive diplomas of international
standard valid in many countries all over the world. In 2000 a post-graduate
course was established. We are going to train people for bachelor's, master's
and doctor's degrees. It will enable us to improve the professional skills
of teachers and the quality of education.
The names of sportsmen who used to be and are students of the Institute
are well-known far beyond the borders of Belarus. They are even difficult
to enumerate. We are proud to train fifteen Honored Masters of Sports,
over fifty masters of international class, about a hundred masters of
sports and masters of sports candidates. National teams in particular
kinds of sports consist of the students of IHEI mainly. These students
have conquered the highest sports summits and become prizewinners of the
Olympics, World and European championships, as well as winners of Belarusian
championships. Thirty students of the IHEI participated in the Olympic
Games in 2000. Our deep gratitude goes to these true patriots who bring
fame to their home country Belarus by their hard titanic work.
We do a lot for the country and we require practically nothing in return.
At the President meeting of chancellors of Belarusian higher educational
establishments on May 3, 2000 I came forth with a suggestion and a request
to pay attention to the hardships private higher educational establishments
face. We were promised on the highest level to go deep into the matter,
to examine it and to assist, of course. Several years later the very same
assistance I requested for was rendered solely to state higher educational
establishments that have departments providing students with education
on a paid basis, i.e. these were practically all state higher educational
establishments. The concerns and problems of private higher educational
establishments were never mentioned as if there were no establishments
of the kind in the country…
God suggested me an idea and assistance in the good cause of establishing
the institute where spiritual values and upbringing of the youth according
to Christian canons was made a rule since the very first day the institute
was set up. Is there any activity that can be nobler than to train the
youth and to give young people a start in life thus securing the future
of the state and to help exercise their right written down in the constitution,
i.e. the right to be educated and to actualize their abilities and spiritual
potential as much as possible. I do my best to assist young people in
everything, let my contemporaries evaluate my efforts. My conscience is
clear… I appreciate truth which, as is known, is far from always being
on the surface. Let everyone bear his cross predestined by the Lord and
be lavish in sharing the fruits of his labor with others.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PREDESTINATION OF A HUMAN BEING IS TO BE HUMAN
Today they speak a lot about the need to humanitarize and humanize the
society. The great attention to the problem of intellectuals both in our
country and all over the world testifies to the effect that there is social
want to shape an individual of a new type. The only thing all those who
participate in discussing the problem agree with is that the features
the individual should possess are scholarship, culture and civility, i.e.
the level of culture in the broader sense. They are true to suppose the
humankind will manage to overcome in the future the conflict between high
level of specialized knowledge and agonizing spiritual and moral state
on the basis of humanizing and humanitarizing society. It is beyond any
doubt that the destinies of human kind and biological survival of the
generations to come depend on the successful solution to the problem that
could be considered a global one by right. Unfortunately, the area of
theoretical accord of researchers is limited only to the parameters mentioned
above. The problem is really complicated and complex, as it touches all
spheres of human activity and all of its essential manifestations without
any exception. It ties into a knot the numerous processes of social and
spiritual birth, making and shaping of an individual. What is most important,
the root of the problem is hidden deeply in vision paradigms. Let's begin
with clearing up the meaning of the notions 'humanitarization' and 'humanization'.
They both derive from the terms 'humanitarian' and 'humanism'. The Latin
word 'human' unites the notions but it does not identify their content.
Thus, the term 'humanism' comprises a whole range of qualities that characterize
a human being from the viewpoint of the display of the properties of humaneness
at the emotional, sensory, psychological, or spiritual, level, as well
as at the conscious and rational level, or the level of reason. In any
of the interpretations the initial premise of interpretation of the notion
'humanism' is to declare the value of human life, assertion of human dignity,
the right to be happy, free, respected and loved. Besides, humanism presupposes
manifestation of such qualities as philanthropy, sympathy, compassion,
mercy, tolerance, kindness, honor, dignity and responsibility.
Thus, the notion 'humanism' reflects the hypostasis of human existence
characterized by the display of humaneness and elevated existence in all
spheres where human essence is realized. Humanization of social relations
is a most complicated process aimed to create conditions to nurturing
and expanding humaneness in every individual and in society in general.
The notion 'humanitarian' (derived from the Latin word 'humanitas' meaning
'human nature', 'scholarship') means 'concerning a human being, his social
being and consciousness'. 'Humanitarian' means 'human'. In this respect
the term reflects the whole range of relations where a human being is
included irrespective of his social and moral estimates. Its content presupposes
structures that can be defined both negatively and positively. Hence,
in the broader sense the notion 'humanitarian' embraces all spheres of
human life and activity. There is nothing inhuman about human existence.
K. Marx and F. Engels wrote that 'the so-called 'inhuman' is the same
outcome of present-day relations as human is'.
The term 'humanitarian' has a more narrow meaning. It is used to classify
fields of learning (natural, technical and humanitarian), to differentiate
cultures (humanitarian and non-humanitarian, or technological and technical).
On the assumption of the given interpretation the process of humanitarization
denotes purposeful expansion of the scope of humanitarian knowledge influence
in different spheres of social life. Humanitarization in this respect
cannot be an end in itself. It is impossible to foster and cultivate the
feelings of love, compassion, empathy, etc. solely by way of scientific
knowledge. It is not so much essential nowadays merely to accumulate information.
What is more important is to realize its sense in the general picture
of conscious existence. This, in its turn, requires cardinal quality changes
of those areas of social life that participate immediately in upbringing
and education process.
Education system is of particular importance in the process. Practice
shows that changes in education sphere from the point of view of its humanitarization
are connected, as a rule, with the narrow meaning of the notion 'humanitarian'.
The innovations boil down firstly to the emergence of educational and
other establishments with the adjective 'humanitarian' in their names
and, secondly, to the increase in the number of subjects and teaching
time for humanitarian disciplines. It goes without saying, activity in
this direction is important. It is evident, though, that the efforts undertaken
are not enough, moreover, the activity itself will not transform the quality
of education. My experience testifies to the effect that the humanities
taught at higher educational establishments, such as philosophy, ethics,
history and theory of culture, religious studies and others, do not solve
the task of training a man of culture. They offer a student a range of
knowledge that cannot make any significant progress in spiritual and moral
development of an individual, as the knowledge is acquired formally. In
most cases higher school graduates are professional whose intellectual
background is filled with the knowledge of individual narrow fields of
activity. The knowledge of the humanities fails to function in their minds,
as a rule. It is common with students to forget the information after
they pass an exam or a test. The individual and social lack of demand
for this information produces an illusion of minor importance or sometimes
irrelevance of the humanities. Such attitude to the subjects is especially
typical of students in technical higher educational establishments. It
is not the fault of students, though, rather it is their problem. There
are no grounds to count on another outcome of teaching as education system
itself, its structure and correlation of components within the structure
and its interaction with other social systems do not provide for and do
not intend to train a man of culture, i.e. educated and well-brought-up
person. Instead we have a licentiate who does not quite answer the image
of an educated person.
I have worked in the higher school system for about thirty years and I
cannot stop wondering the 'wisdom' of those officials who work out academic
training curriculum and determine the sequence of teaching subjects. I
wonder, for example, how philosophy can perform its functions, the vision
one in the first turn, if it is taught in the first and second years of
study at higher educational establishments. How can philosophy realize
its rich spiritual potential if the mind of a young person is absolutely
unprepared to perceive a most complicated theoretical information for
a number of subjective and objective reasons? It turns out that philosophy
does not perform the function of the subject meant to develop logical
thinking, critical self-actualization, independence of thought, the ability
to wonder and doubt and, in the long run, to foster love for wisdom. Rather
it turns into the opposite, i.e. into a set of incomprehensible terms,
into the process of learning by heart definitions and someone else's thoughts
distant from everyday problems and spiritual needs of a young person.
Thus, philosophy is not perceived as 'the live soul of culture', it is
thought to be lifeless abstraction and parody of life. This seems to be
the reason why young people turn to religion more willingly rather than
to philosophy in search of spiritual and moral support, though philosophy,
according to Immanuel Kant is called 'not to teach thoughts but to teach
to think'. This is one of the aspects of the problem of education humanitarization.
Speaking about some tendencies concerning changes in education structure
I cannot but mention the problem of university education. There are tens
of universities in our republic at present. Most of them are former institutes
that have recently acquired university status. They changed the name,
their organization and administrative structure underwent changes, but
I wonder whether the content and strategic focus of the educational establishment
changed. The practice indicates that significant quality transformations
have not occurred. What is a university? First of all, it is not merely
an educational establishment but also a social institution aimed to shape
and work out overall cultural strategy and tactics, to determine basic
outlines and content elements in spiritual and intellectual area. This
is global civilization predestination of a university. University education
system is meant to mould interacting unity of the world, spirit, science
and culture. No wonder a classical west European university developed
under the aegis of one dominant discipline that was philosophy. The integrity
mentioned was realized through this discipline. Western university was
directed at development and transfer of knowledge, the aim of the knowledge
being spiritual mastery and interpretation of social and cultural space
in its integrity.
It goes without saying university took upon itself the solution of more
particular tasks connected with professional training, e.g. medicine,
jurisprudence, etc. Professional training presupposed their integration
into a single integral system of knowledge whose development was subject
to the primary goal of ensuring the unity of professional knowledge and
the whole wealth of global culture. The university fulfilled the pragmatic
function and thus was indirectly related to the solution of economic and
other problems the society faced. It was aimed at training and bringing
up the spiritual elite, at developing the social layer of people who could
be called educated and well-brought-up in the true sense of the word.
This was and must be the essence and specific nature of university education.
It is no wonder the greatest achievements of the past centuries in the
area of understanding global eternal problems of human existence were
accomplished by university graduates. The prominent Western Europe philosophers
were the people whose spiritual potential was determined by the integral
unity of specialized knowledge such as physics, medicine, mathematics
and astronomy, as well as of the humanities, such as philosophy, theology,
history, ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric and logic, with the latter playing
a dominant role. It was the humanities that enabled specialized knowledge
to function in the mind as essential components developing critical thinking
and theoretical doubt, surprise and love for wisdom. The series of the
disciplines developed and put into shape vision paradigms. Specialized
knowledge, in its turn, played the function of a catalyst that encouraged
thought and directed it at deep comprehension of the essence of the universe
and the place and role of a human being in it.
The considerations expressed above, undoubtedly, draw an ideal model of
university system. It was not completely realized in the past centuries,
though universities of the past were focused mainly, in modern phraseology,
on educational humanitarization.
The situation at present is different in the main. In the past century
the gap between professional knowledge and overall cultural and humanitarian
training widened and came into conflict. This might be the reason why
XX century did not give rise to its own scholars similar to Marx and Gegel.
I think most of our human and social troubles, misfortunes and catastrophes
are the consequence of the gap.
What is the difference between a university graduate and an institute
graduate who acquired the same profession? The answer is evident. There
are no essential differences. Both the former and the latter are people
who at best gained professional skills of approximately the same level,
who have uncoordinated and scrappy knowledge of the world in general and
of themselves, who are not accustomed to think critically for themselves,
to be aware, to reason and to understand everything around them, rather
they are trained to rely on faith, on submitting authorities, opinions
and are suited to manipulate themselves. In other words, present-day university
education does not fulfill its functions, thus, the number of universities
does not change and, moreover, does not transform the education system
itself.
The major predestination of a human being on earth is to be a human being
in the first place, rather than an economist, engineer, doctor, lawyer,
teacher, etc. What does the society do for an individual to seek to develop
humaneness in him, to pattern his behavior and actions on humanist ideals
and principles? The first thing that is revealed distinctly is complete
public disregard of the most vital and complicated science of how to make
a man and to carry out one's main earthly purpose in the inexhaustible
flow of life. Thus, it turns out that society is comprised of functioning
units playing specific roles of managers, lawyers, accountants, etc. The
roles are played professionally and skillfully, though, taken together
in their integral unity and interrelation they do not lead to the desired
result. The play is doomed to failure if it does not go by the rules of
the genre and is devoid of single deep inner sense. Society should not
count on the safe present, not to mention the promising future, if its
activity is based on the rules and principles turned upside down and if
the activity is carried out with disregard of the key condition of its
own self-preservation, i.e. humaneness of a human being.
Secondly, we may trace quite clearly the tendency whose essence can be
defined as purposeful shaping of an anti-human. The tendency expresses
itself in the concentrated attack at human mind with the aim to 'finish
off', to destroy the qualities typical of a human being. Television and
other media play the primary role in the process. There arises an impression
that their primary function is not merely to inform people but to supply
them with spiritual nourishment that is able to infect the mind with lethal
illnesses similar to AIDS and cancer. Mass dissemination of different
technologies of violence, cruelty, murder, ways of deception, swindle
and sharp practice flow into human soul and mind like dirty poisonous
torrents, washing away and destroying all before them the 'clear streams
of humanness'.
Cruelty and violence were eternal concomitants throughout human history.
The current situation is peculiar, nevertheless, because they turned into
a means of bringing up mass immorality owing to the well-developed system
of the media, in other words, the means of mass anti-upbringing. Its influence
over the inner life of a human being can be compared to HIV-infection.
There are invisible changes on the subconscious level that a human being
is unconscious of. Indifference to pain and sufferings of other people
followed by satisfaction and pleasure at seeing the suffering of those
who fall victims of violence gradually occupy more place in his soul.
There is gradual everyday purposeful occupation of people's minds on the
state level, its destructive violation and substitution of human features
by anti-human ones. Thus they pave the way for selfishness, aggression
and cruelty to spring up.
In this respect I'd like to recollect an episode from my childhood that
my memory still keeps, though it may seem to be insignificant. I was watching
a film in our village club. The events unfolding on the screen were nothing
special, terrifying and tragic from present-day viewpoint, though I perceived
them like a real tragedy. A beautiful and graceful roe runs away from
a wolf. The wolf catches and kills it. The scene was unpretentious and
devoid of any psychological nuances. I sat in the hall crying, as I was
shocked so deeply by the death of a defenseless animal. I remember being
amazed and puzzled why other people look at the screen silently and indifferently.
Today, as I watch the emotional reaction of people, especially the youth
and children, to the scenes of sophisticated cruelty and ingenious violence
always shown on the TV screen, I discover in their eyes interest in the
events going on, curiosity and even delight at seeing torments, blood
and suffering, rather than tears of sympathy and compassionate worries.
I wonder if a person's spiritual and moral immunity is on the brink of
complete extinction. Or there might still be possibility and time to discover
an efficient medicine to rescue the life-giving bases of human spirit.
Television and other media are the greatest human invention. They are
neither evil nor good in themselves. Everything depends on the people
and the aims and tasks they seek to attain by making use of the media.
We come across an absurd situation at this point. On the one hand, it
is clear to the whole of society, including its structures that fulfill
power and administrative functions, that current policy and content of
the media are not just harmful but even dangerous for a human being and
society. On the other hand, who is responsible for carrying out purposeful,
conscious, theoretically substantiated and rationally planned actions
aimed to destroy humanism and morality and everything human in a human
being? The answer is evident. Those who realize and know what they do
are to blame. The situation really goes beyond the reasonable limits.
The mind must be utterly insane if a man is unable to respond to nothing
but golden or, rather, 'green' calf.
There is another aspect to the problem. We live in transition period.
As is known, critical stages in development of society are dangerous not
just by their economic, political and other cataclysms and catastrophes
but rather by the shock human consciousness and spiritual sphere of social
life experience and endure. Transition period consciousness is by right
called 'unhappy consciousness', for it faces the most complicated destructive
processes linked with collapse of established notions, beliefs, former
faith, moral and social norms and principles. People who are deprived
of any firm spiritual and moral support find themselves, figuratively
speaking, to be thrown into a stormy sea. Those who can swim will come
to the surface, while those who cannot swim will go to the bottom.
The events of 1917 and the end of the previous century are similar in
this respect. In both cases social, political and economic transformations
were implemented and are being implemented under immaturity and public
consciousness lack of readiness to fundamental quality transformations
in its content. That is why the same method was added to armory both at
the beginning and the end of the century. It was the method of outside
compulsion and violent influence that deprived people of any chance to
independent inner choice of moral principles to be guided by in their
behavior and activity. The whole set of public relations worked out the
only life maxim, namely, if you want to live and survive socially you
should act according to the way, either socialist or capitalist one, chosen
by politicians. As is known, the process was accompanied by ugly forms
of spiritual transformation.
We may observe something similar at present, though with the sign 'the
other way round'. Something that used to be black turned white, evil started
to be perceived as good. There are differences, nevertheless.
There was some social ideal at the time, though illusive, but still there
was one that functioned in public consciousness as a uniting and guiding
idea. Labor activity was attached special importance to as a way to realize
the ideal. At present there is no ideal at all. Market economy is unable
to fulfill these functions, as it is merely a means to attain something.
Nobody knows what 'something' means, may be a means to gain capital in
the future. Capitalism in its present form as we can observe it in Europe
and America does not quite correspond to the notion of an ideal.
Thus, there is no public ideal and, consequently, there is no idea that
could unite people. Public 'storm' is going on and gaining in scope, human
spirit is rushing about in search of some solid support to survive. The
further the process is the more difficult it is to find this support.
The stark realities of life have already touched the mind of every individual.
They say if you want to survive and keep afloat, your behavior and activity
should be guided by anti-human principles and norms such as 'do steal,
kill, tell lies, deceive, give false testimony and commit adultery' and
you will get to the top of the social hierarchy structure. You are going
to be rich and powerful. Honest labor, just like honor, dignity, love,
sincerity and many of those things that determine the basis of human and
social survival are vanishing and becoming obliterated under the current
circumstances. Reality forces even those who still retain the 'warmth
and light' of moral guidelines in their souls to make a bargain with their
conscience. Truly, we may speak about 'unhappy consciousnesses' and tragic
society. I wonder if society that bases its activity on the values contrary
to its nature and essence is going to have any future.
We may often hear as an argument justifying mass immorality, lawlessness,
wild outburst of violence and crime that all these events are indispensable
side effects typical of the initial stage of public relations capitalization
process. The history of capitalism formation in the West testifies to
the effect. They survived these negative pages of their history, so we
may somehow overcome them in the end, too.
Indeed, the processes to do with transformation of property forms and
types have always been accompanied by violence and blood. Yet, we have
to make allowance for an extremely important circumstance. The world has
changed drastically. The processes of integration of countries and people,
as well as their interrelation and interdependence, make a single social
space and cosmopolitan global community whose well-being depends on every
country and nation. This is the world of interdependent essences. Events
taking place in a particular state tell on the whole global community
this way or another. Spiritual and moral focus is of primary importance
against the background of aggravating global crises under unprecedented
scientific, technical, information, military and technological advances.
Lawlessness, anti-humanism, immorality, brutality and irresponsibility
spread in some country or another are a potential threat to the whole
world. Thus, it is hardly legitimate today to find an excuse and to seek
consolation in any historic analogies. Our present may not only ruin our
own future but also destroy the future of the global civilization.
I have touched just some of the aspects of the complex and many-sided
problem of education and culture. At first sight, their brief analysis
is followed by a rather deplorable conclusion that it is impossible to
teach a human being morality and culture and to implant him humanistic
principles of existence in the society that lives according to laws denying
their vital importance, significance and usefulness.
At a kindergarten, school, technical school, a college or a higher educational
establishment a person is persuaded he should be kind, just, treat the
elders, the weak and the sick with respect, that he has to love his parents
and his Motherland, to protect nature. He is also taught to see and understand
the beauty. I wonder if a person's mind can absorb the acquired knowledge
as inherent moral principles determining behavior and actions of a human
being if his inner circle and society in general are full to the brim
with injustice, envy and evil.
In other words, humanitarian education functions today as an autonomous
independent system isolated from other social structures. This is like
a state in a state that should fulfill the task known to be impracticable,
i.e. to develop an educated and well-brought-up, i.e. cultured, individual.
The task may be achieved only through joint efforts of the whole society.
I think the first step we should make in this direction is we should realize
the need to humanize and humanitarize all social relations. We are already
able to make at least some changes, say, it is quite possible to change
the content strategy of television and the media, to introduce appropriate
amendments concerning administrative personnel recruitment and appointment,
etc.
I'd like to say a few words about the manpower question. Things in any
team depend a lot on its leader. To perform his function successfully
he should possess a range of qualities. In the first place he should be
a skilled professional with a talent for organization, he should get on
with people, be a diplomat, a forecaster, etc. The higher is the rank
of the leader the more is required from him. Yet, the hierarchy of selection
criteria lacks those that would characterize an individual from the viewpoint
of his humanitarian training and his cultural level.
An aspirant should have doctor's degrees in philosophy and theology and
to have command of foreign languages in order to be appointed the Pope
of Rome. To defend his Candidate's dissertation in any academic field
an applicant should pass an exam in philosophy and a foreign language.
All this is not required in order to be a leader, e.g. a minister or a
director of an association. It should be quite the opposite, though, on
an assumption of common sense logic, i.e. the higher the rank of a leader
is the higher level of humanitarian knowledge he should possess and the
more ability to critical and logical thinking he should display. He should
also be an example of scholarship and culture.
I can't but touch upon the problem of deputy corps electing. It is absolutely
clear that people who take such a big personal responsibility for the
state of affairs in the country and for the society that entrusted them
with the duty should be aware that efficient lawmaking activity depends
on the knowledge and competence of its players.
Both politics in general and lawmaking sphere in particular are most complicated
social organization structures that perform the functions of public relations
management and adjustment. It is right here where the destiny of the country
is decided and determined, so political activity of deputies concerns
interests of every individual one way or another.
It goes without saying that fruitful lawmaking activity requires sound
humanitarian knowledge not only in the sphere of jurisprudence but also
in the field of history, philosophy, political science, economics, culture
and religious studies that enable one to take decisions that should not
only satisfy momentary social needs but also take into account as much
as possible the whole range of social interaction and decisions involved
within the area.
In other words, deputy corps requires knowledge of society as an integral
body, of the structures it comprises and of forms and types of correlation
and interaction. On this condition they might manage to avoid corporate
isolation of interests of different social layers and groups, i.e. the
defective practice when every player in lawmaking tries to ensure his
own interests. Workers, farmers, entrepreneurs, doctors, teachers, scientists,
pensioners, the handicapped, servicemen, i.e. representatives of every
social sphere make appropriate laws to express and defend their own interests.
The laws in their aggregate, though, do not ensure the lawmaking initiative
unity. With respect to society in general they not only turn out to be
underproductive sometimes but they even contain destructive elements that
force social tensions and promote social instability in the country.
I think it's far from being enough to be a professional in some field
of activity and claim the deputy mandate on that ground. Not every cook,
metalworker, machine operator, engineer, teacher, economist and doctor
is able to run a state. We should get rid of the illusion otherwise we
are going to make no headway for a very long time. The society and each
of its members should make more serious requirements to elected representatives
of the people.
I sometimes think the number of those who are nominated candidates for
deputies would decline significantly if they took some preliminary test,
e.g. if they had to pass a candidate's exam in some humanitarian discipline.
If a scientist who studies, say, some particular problem of this or that
science should know philosophy why a person who aspires to run the society
shouldn't? Today the problem of humanization of social interactions and
social structures is shifted to the plane of extending humanitarian education.
The solution to the problem is based on the notion that humanization is
an outward feature that may help introduce knowledge into life. The knowledge
of a human being, though, is unlikely to introduce any significant changes
into spiritual focus dealing with the meaning of life. Elevated ideas
will not turn into real life as they themselves are unable to 'revive'
the soul.
The process is similar to collecting items of folk arts of the past that
testify to the effect that the items do not constitute part of everyday
life any more. In the same way the aspiration to solve the problem of
humanization by way of introducing 'human features' into consciousness
is nothing but museum piece display, though one should not ignore importance
and significance of humanitarian knowledge. According to an outstanding
scholar, who is called 'English Lomonosov', a Nobel Prize winner Bertrand
Russell, 'Human thought cultivation rarely breeds positive and humane
feelings, though it occurs sometimes. The thing is that it implants into
a person interests different from those that make him spoil his neighbor's
life. It also familiarizes a human being with sources of self-respect
other than lust for power.'
Thus, developing humanitarian knowledge and society education appears
to be one of the most important components of humanistic focus. Yet, it
is far from being the only and the primary one. It is impossible to foster
and cultivate the feelings of love, sympathy, compassion, etc. through
knowledge alone.
At the beginning of the third millennium human kind begins to realize
the fact that knowledge devoid of love and morality poses a real threat
not only to human existence but to existence of all living things on earth.
It must be high time to live according to commandments of a Bible prophet
who said, 'I will come to people to spare them knowledge that does not
know love'…
CHAPTER XIV
HUMANISM AS THE BASIS OF THE NATIONAL IDEA
Both Marxist doctrine and life itself provide a lot of facts to prove
the great role of ideas in society development. They may both promote
and prevent its improvement or they may either be an obstacle to or slow
down its pace of movement or accelerate it. The ideas that can carry along
vast masses unite them and direct their activity at implementing a common
goal, play an especially significant role.
That is why the problem of spiritual basis of society and its ideological
unity never lost its currency. Yet, in transition periods of society development
it acquires primary importance, for it needs ideological grounds for political,
social and economic policy the country chooses. I'd like to express my
views on the problem of state idea and ideology development.
Let's find out what ideology means.
Ideology is a notion that denotes a whole set of ideas, conceptions, political
mottos, party program documents, philosophical concepts, etc. that reflects
vital practical interests and social goals, as well as contains action
programs. The core of ideology is a range of ideas to do with the issue
of seizure, retention and employment of power by political players. (Ideology.
New philosophical dictionary. Minsk, 1999, page 256). As follows from
the above definition the essence and purpose of ideology is to support
and defend the existing system or, on the contrary, to oppose it. State
ideology in this respect is primarily political ideology that defends
and grounds actions of the political power. As soon as the institution
of the state emerged, ideology became its indispensable element, though
the term 'ideology' began to be used much later. The term belongs to the
figure of late Enlightenment in France Destut de Trese who used the notion
'ideology' to denote a science of correct reasoning laws. Soon it started
to be used in another meaning, namely, as a special field of state activity,
including development of state policy theoretical justification and drawing
up technological methods and ways of influence over human consciousness.
In XX century ideology turned into one of the main spheres of state activity
and most powerful state influence over people. The state of affairs does
not excite any surprise. State places an order for ideology as it is inconceivable
without any ideological basis. Political power requires support and protection
of the present political course, i.e. the basic function of ideology is
apologetics of the political power in force and, thus, of the state.
This is the essence and purpose of state ideology. Although any socially
stratified society has opposing ideology that performs contrary functions
manifestly or in a hidden way, either legally or illegally, it goes without
saying that the priority role is played by official, or state, ideology.
Thus, the first demand made to ideology is that it should present a theoretically
grounded concept pointing at the advantage and virtue of the political
course pursued, as well as at long-term possibilities of the political
power to implement hopes and expectations of the country's population.
I cannot but agree with the opinion that to 'raise the economy is easier
than to arrange ideological work system and to obtain its outcome'. Society
functions on economic basis. The more successfully it develops and the
more significant its achievements are, the more opportunities it gives
people to realize their abilities, aspirations and wishes and the more
the space enabling to satisfy the needs in the social, political and spiritual
spheres of social life extends. The more prosperous the country is the
more significant is the role it plays on the global arena. All these are
common truths. Here also belongs the fact that there is no activity more
complicated than to efficiently organize social activity as an integral
system which is ensured by economy, in the long run. Historic experience
indicates that in countries with adjusted economy mechanism that practically
never fails, state ideology is present though invisibly. There is no need
to prove anyone that the state pursues proper policy.
People feel the policy is true as they are paid decent salaries and pension
provision, guarantees are provided by the state, etc. By the way, the
USA state ideology shaped in the conceptual ideas of 'common welfare society'
and 'society of equal opportunity' has economy as its basis. On the contrary,
in time of crises and economic and political instability the role of ideology
increases significantly. By the way, it was due to economic reasons mainly
that the USSR paid so much attention to the problems of ideology. If economy
developed efficiently in our country at present, there would be no need
to discuss ideology issues and think over the problem of the state idea.
Intellectual efforts of the country would then be concentrated on the
problems of spiritual development. We have what we gained, though. It
is an extremely complicated task to enhance economy, especially to raise
it from the ruins. Yet, if we fail to do this no ideological doctrine
whatever carefully worked out it is would help us survive. It may stabilize
society for a while but the wave of economic problems will break through
sooner or later. The Soviet Union was an evident example.
The state idea is necessary. Its role in social life is of enormous significance.
It can unite people and fill them with enthusiasm, e.g. the idea of communism,
to direct their efforts and will to realize a common goal. For the idea
to fulfill its function it is not enough just to define it. The idea should
be adopted by mass consciousness.
The idea should be attractive to the majority of the population and to
reflect its immediate interests and aspirations, as well as hopes and
dreams. It is complicated to develop, as it arises in public environment
and in mass consciousness rather than in officials' offices and the minds
of scholars and theoreticians. It floats around and ripens on the unconscious
level. The idea in its undeveloped state seems to be waiting to be given
birth to. The task of theoreticians is to help the idea be born. They
should shape it logically and express social intuitive aspirations in
a reasonable way, transfer it to the level of awareness and make it comprehensible.
It is only under this condition that we may speak about conscious and
voluntary adoption of the idea by the country's population. Yet, there
is another way. One may use the potential of theoretical intellect to
develop a concept that would present black as white, non-existent as existing
and mythic as real. A full-blown system of the media today enables to
implant any idea, even the one far from public interests, into mass consciousness
and to turn it into some material force. Let's recollect B.N. Yeltsin's
election campaign. The slogan 'Vote, or you will lose' it was held under
was implanted into public consciousness. People voted and … lost. The
essence and functions of ideology are manifested quite evidently in the
situations of the kind.
We went through the same in Soviet period and we remember ideology of
developed socialism. The possibility cannot be ruled out completely at
present, too.
The greater is political, economic, ethnic and spiritual society differentiation
and the more complex its organization is, the more difficult it is to
discover fundamental basis for its ideological unity. The problem gets
more sophisticated when the society goes through transition period that
requires conscious choice of social and political strategy. The present-day
situation is characterized by a diversity of interpretations and estimates
of the processes going on, as well as by lack in any social accord in
defining goals and ideals of the country's long-term development. On the
one hand, Soviet socialism displayed its historic groundlessness and thus
compromised the idea of socialism. On the other hand, the experience of
pursuing the course aimed to develop market reforms in Russia testifies
to losses, failures and mistakes rather than achievements and gains. Besides,
the raised Iron Curtain enabled us to see what modern technologically
and economically advanced society is like, the society where the devilish
image of reality prospers and is combined with obvious economic and social
achievements. This is the reason why present-day public consciousness
displays the evident tendency to disregard authority of the West and the
USA as the ideal one should strive for and the model to be followed when
implementing changes. Thirdly, the focus on joining state socialism and
market reforms (with the former as a priority) in our country did not
as well produce any results that would inspire most of the population
to make a conscious choice of the suggested policy. I'd like to direct
your attention to the following circumstance. It seems to me that relative
social and economic stability during the restructuring development period
in our society has acquired the features of stagnation. Stability prevents
inner sources of social self-development and self-perfection from functioning.
Hence its state is characterized as making no headway. The situation does
not seem to be improving, at least everyday life and its perception do
not testify to this effect. Real life is still full of problems and contradictions.
They deepen and multiply day after day rather than diminish. One may speak
about the problems endlessly. It hurts me to think about my long-suffering
fellow countrymen and the fates of my Motherland. I wonder what idea they
could be offered to inspire them with hope for the better future, at least
the future of the children and grandchildren of those who live now. Frankly
speaking, I do not see any state idea that would justify and defend the
activities of the political power, on the one hand, and unite and inspire
people, on the other.
There is another aspect to the problem. During the perestroika period
our people learnt a lot. The main lesson they learnt is not to trust fine
words and politicians' promises of equality, brotherhood, happiness, justice,
etc. By the way, the history indicates there has hardly been any emperor
or president who did not use the notion 'people's interests' to ground
his policy. When Lenin considered the tasks of the socialist state that
were of paramount importance he pointed out that first of all it is necessary
to present interests of the proletariat as interests of the whole people
by means of ideological influence. This was successfully implemented.
Moreover, the following regularity can be traced, namely, the longer is
the distance between the policy pursued and the real vital interests of
the majority of the population, the more appeals to people's interests
ideology contains.
Thus, the task of developing ideology and the state idea is rather complicated
in principle. Moreover, the solution of the task gets more complicated
in contemporary society.
I think that irrespective of the strategic way of political, social and
economic development our country will choose, the main thing is that vision
humanist paradigm should be assumed as its basis. Its specific character
is determined by the idea of global essence of a human being who is integrated
into a system of the unity 'space, nature and society'. It follows that
the basic principle regulating interaction of individual hypostases of
existence, their life and development is co-evolution and co-development
principle. Within the system a human being acts as a player whose supreme
duty and the meaning of stay on the Earth consists in personal responsibility
for maintenance and increase of Life in all its diversity. Unlike anthropocentric
humanism that places Human Being as supreme value in its center, modern
humanism asserts that the core of vision focus is Human integrity, while
Life is supreme value. Life is perceived as the only way and condition
of co-existence of the world and a human being at all levels, i.e. at
the biological, natural, social, emotional, spiritual, cosmic and trans-cendent.
Life is also seen as a way of unfolding abilities of an individual and
his creative potential.
The specific feature of contemporary social space manifests itself in
globalization and integration processes, as well as in the processes of
interconnection and interdependence of all players of the historic process.
World history and the integrated global historic process is reality rather
than theoretical abstraction. Integration tendencies in economy, technology,
politics, etc. are quite evident, while things are quite different in
the spiritual sphere. Both diverse religious forms and political and ideological
doctrines separate people as they sometimes turn into insurmountable obstacles
to mutual understanding in time of combined action. This is one of the
reasons for global crises aggravation and impotence of human kind in the
face of common problems, e.g. economic and demographic one, threats of
thermonuclear war, drug addiction, AIDS, criminalization, terrorism, etc.
Life in all of its manifestations is threatened as a result. Human life
at present depends a lot on preserving cosmic, natural and social value
of existence. A human being is deeply integrated into the diversity of
links and relations of being. Its ontology is far from being sovereign.
The spiritual hypostasis of a human being is not free, either, for it
is made conditional on inherent laws of integral Being. The world is diverse
but integrated. We may count on diversity only if we preserve the integrity.
We all belong to the human race; this is what unites us all. We live on
the same planet in the same universe, the same sun shines and warms us,
the same moon and stars light up darkness of the night, we have the same
sky and the earth. These are common truths. Yet, the way to recognize
them and develop a moral maxim inside us which teaches us not to harm,
to love and protect the world we came to, to make our stay on earth an
event of cosmic significance, is very long.
In my opinion, the vision paradigm with the idea of unity and interdependence
of a human being, society, nature and space as its fundamental basis could
make the matrix determining the structure of values. It does not materially
contradict either religious or atheist world view, thus it could be the
base uniting efforts of science and religion aimed to shape an individual
who is morally responsible for the destinies of human kind and the universe
and who aspires to preserve and develop live in every Living Thing, spiritual
in the Spirit, kind in Kindness, beautiful in Beauty, true in Truth and
loving in Love.
Humanism as a vision principle does not boil down to some particular basis.
It is peculiar as it synthesizes the spirit, the soul and feelings into
a single space of high moral standards. It should be noted in this respect
that humanist paradigm displays specific features of Belarusian ethnicity
national character, as well as peculiarities of its psychology and spiritual
and moral focus.
If spiritual paradigm of effective practical humanism makes the basis
of the national (state) idea that will mean our country is laying down
the foundation for the promising future of both our nation and the whole
of humanity.
CHAPTER XV
PRIORITIES OF INTELLECTUAL ELITE IN XXI CENTURY
The contemporary world faces a range of problems that can be solved solely
by joint efforts of intellectuals irrespective of their fields of activity.
We can single out the following groups of problems among the common ones,
e.g. the global ones, where the problem of vision crisis with spiritual
and moral degradation of social players as its result can be put in the
forefront. At present the majority of countries including our state lives
according to the formula based on worshipping one idol which is its majesty
dollar and is concerned with gaining highest possible financial and economic
efficiency. Thus, we are busy with other things, rather than with perceiving
a Human Being as a goal. A human being, nature and cultural wealth turn
into a means to gain material wealth. Hence we face economic crisis, military
threat, demographic crisis, drug and alcohol addiction and so on. These
problems are common for all human beings. The future of our home country,
of our Motherland depends on whether they will be solved or not. The second
group of problems is conditioned specifically by the historic situation
in our republic, i.e. organization and life sustenance of the social body.
The problems should be solved by intellectuals, i.e. people who are notable
for their education, scholarship and the level of their culture, those
who are able to create and take action and who feel personal responsibility
for the outcome of their action.
Those who are employed in education sphere have a lofty mission and take
special responsibility for both solving many problems and developing an
intellectual layer.
There are quite many problems here, too. It is necessary to clear up the
basic task of education in order to determine them. It is obvious that
the primary task today is to shape an individual who is cultured, educated,
well-brought-up, responsible and has some spiritual and moral dominating
idea, rather than to develop an individual who possesses some particular
specialty.
Hence, education should not be concerned merely with teaching knowledge.
It should develop a personality in the broadest sense. Thus, education
should perform the function of bringing up an individual. This type of
education is an objective contemporary need. Knowledge in itself is neutral
with regard to moral assessment. It may be used both for a good cause
and to harm. Bacon's aphorism 'Knowledge is power' bears a negative connotation
rather than a positive one at present. That is why it is important to
give knowledge a creative status. The task may be implemented through
education that performs the function of bringing up an individual. In
my opinion this education is an inherent feature of education system,
rather than an external one implanted artificially into the system of
education, i.e. upbringing is an indispensable attribute of education,
rather than its individual component. In its broader sense, education
means upbringing, and vice versa. In practice, unfortunately, education
and upbringing appear as two parallel processes. What can be undertaken
to change the situation? I think our efforts should be concentrated in
the following directions.
Education should be concerned with developing the ability to reason, think,
doubt, compare and think critically rather than with introducing well-known
truths and bare information into the mind. For the time being our school
system is concerned with implementing its informative function rather
than its educational one.
Knowledge domain-dependent learning should be accompanied by some meaning
and value mounting, with developing humanist vision paradigm as its goal.
What does it mean? Education in the Soviet school was integrated inherently
into the overall education process, with Marxist-Leninist ideology as
its basis. Upbringing in the vein of the ideology was not carried out
solely as special program activities such as labor, patriotic, moral,
aesthetic, etc. It was not only an important independent part of education
process and its indispensable element. It was none the less important
that program activities themselves performed the function of bringing
up. The Marxist-Leninist ideology ran through both the humanities (history,
philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, etc.) and natural and technical disciplines.
The result was that education system shaped a definite type of vision,
namely, communist one, i.e. view of the world in general and the place
and role of a human being in the world, hence it set a definite spiritual
and moral matrix that motivated behavior and actions of the players.
In other words, education performed the function of bringing up. What
do we observe nowadays? In a decade both the society in general and education
system lost their consolidating spiritual pivot. Hence, education fulfills
merely the task to inform and teach. It trains individuals who possess
some particular specialty, rather than a human being who is humane, well-brought-up
and cultured. The process of upbringing is carried out entirely by the
'school of life' that requires and reproduces an 'anti-human' who is cruel,
merciless, and avid and who is directed toward such processes as to steal
to kill and to lie by the ideology of success. The one who is honest and
decent is unlikely to gain any prosperity. Children dream to be whoever
they like but none of them thinks about hard labor.
They make efforts to overcome the current state of affairs by humanization
and humanitarization of education. Yet, the reforms carried out in that
direction concern more the outward and formal aspect, as a rule. The novelty
boils down to the following, firstly, to the emergence of educational
and other establishments with the adjective 'humanitarian' in their names
and, secondly, to the increase in the number of subjects and teaching
time for humanitarian disciplines. It goes without saying activity in
this direction is important. It is evident, though, that the efforts undertaken
are not enough, moreover, the activity itself will not transform the quality
of education. My experience testifies to the effect that the humanities
taught at higher educational establishments do not solve the task of training
a man of culture. They offer a student a range of knowledge that cannot
make any significant progress in spiritual and moral development of an
individual as the knowledge is acquired formally. In most cases higher
school graduates are professionals whose intellectual background is filled
with the knowledge of individual narrow fields of activity. The knowledge
of the humanities fails to function in their minds, as a rule. The individual
and social lack of demand for this information produces an illusion of
minor importance or sometimes irrelevance of the humanities.
It goes without saying we have the opportunity to humanize education and
knowledge and to unite all of its numerous streams by means of a single
matrix with the ideas of space, nature, a human being and society unity
and interrelation, the ideas of preserving and confirming life in all
of its hypostases, and of personal responsibility for the outcome of one's
actions, as its basis. Education will be able to perform its functions
of upbringing and teaching only when it has the triad 'knowledge - humanism
- action' as its basis.
It goes without saying the period our country goes through is characterized
by synchronous global and national crises aggravating the social situation
significantly. The crisis phenomena unfolding in all spheres of society's
vital activity act as a basis for 'anti-upbringing'. They develop the
personality type contrary to the ideal being shaped. In a decade we turned
to be quite dissociated from the type of personality whose basic features
are being educated and well-brought-up, i.e. cultured. It seems to be
extremely important to neutralize and moderate the anti-upbringing effect.
This problem has to be solved by the education system that should be directed
toward education performing the function of bringing up. This type of
education implies learning and perceiving any natural and humanitarian
discipline as an individual element integrated into the general system
of the diverse and qualitatively different universe that is uniform in
its structure.
Human dimension of being is a central part of education aimed at upbringing.
In this aspect primary attention should be given to teaching young people
to interpret the knowledge they acquire from a point of view of solving
eternal issues such as the essence of a human being, the role he is destined
for in the general structure of the universe, what the destiny of a human
being is, what life and death mean, what the essence of human life is,
etc. rather than making young people memorize bare facts from the domain
of physics, chemistry, biology, dates of historic events, philosophic
and religious doctrines, social regularities, etc. Human dimension of
being is primarily spiritual and moral dimension. Education with this
dimension as its basis enables us to develop a personality who is knowledgeable
and moral, responsible for his actions, for the fate of other people and
for keeping life and peace on the planet.
Human dimension of being is active dimension. One should make adjustments
into the theory and ideology of social activity when implanting moral
principles of activity. Philosophy of ancient India asserts human achievements
should be based on the triad 'the way of knowledge - the way of love -
the way of activity'. One should remember the wisdom and supplement the
social development structure by the vital humanist, moral and social elements
in compliance with the wisdom.
CHAPTER XVI
PEOPLE WITH HARD DESTINY
My maternal grandfather Alexander Vikentyevich Kirbai was born in 1890s
of XIX century in a family thought to be big even at the time. There were
five boys and two girls in the family. They worked from morning till night
in the field and about the house, as there was always something to do.
Yet, they lived just like others and somehow managed to make both ends
meet. At least my mother did not remember the grandfather ever complaining
about their hard life under the tsar…
It was the time when vain and, as it turned out later, utopist ideas of
tsar dethronement, seizure of power, establishing dictatorship of the
proletariat and establishing a society of equality, justice and good hitherto
unseen in history were emerging and maturing in the depths of the movement
of advanced revolutionaries like Vladimir Ulyanov and others similar to
him…
Time proved it was adventure pure and simple. It was impossible to set
up the society of the kind, moreover, in the economically backward, uncivilized
and illiterate country like Russia was after the wars and revolutions
at the beginning of the century that brought it to ruin. The country had
to rise to the level and mature, it was unwise to act on impulse. Almost
a century passed, yet, we still bear the fruit of those utopist plans.
Vladimir Ulyanov was quite young when he got acquainted with the works
of K. Marx, transferred Marxist theory to Russian reality and reduced
his intentions with pathologic persistence to the only thing, namely,
to the seizure of power no matter what way it would take place, peaceful
or armed. Yet, the founder of the doctrine, the author of 'Capital' thought
to be the 'Bible' of communism, when an old sick man, warned the zealous
revolutionary Vera Zasulych about malignancy of the step. The conclusions
of 'Capital' were based on the economy of such countries with developed
industries as Germany and England while they were absolutely unacceptable
for Russia. Nevertheless, Zasulych ignored the warning. G.V. Plekhanov,
a true scholar, thinker, an expert and judge of Russian culture opposed
Lenin's risky venture, too.
Vladimir Ulyanov, nevertheless, was obsessed with the idea to rearrange
the world and change it radically. Most of his articles and books are
devoted to the theory of revolution where dictatorship of the proletariat
is assigned the part of universal panacea. The tactics of hypocritical
flirting with the nation under the slogan 'factories should belong to
workers and land should belong to peasants' bore its fruit. Who could
explain at the time the intimidated and illiterate people these plans
were unlikely to come true. Moreover, who could foresee the extent of
the tragedy of Bolshevist putting theory into practice?
The proletariat dictatorship Moloch started to gain its terrible strength
right after the October coup. This became evident to the majority of the
intelligent population both in the young Soviet country and outside its
borders. Yet, the problem was it was impossible to hide, to run away and
to sit on the fence anywhere in the country as the Moloch was ubiquitous
and merciless… It was already in the first years of Bolshevist rule that
many of Russian provinces rebelled against the murderous terror of Bolshevist
dictatorship. Kroonstad, the first to rise against the dictatorship in
February 1921, was drowned in blood soon afterwards. The starving Ukraine
and many Russian provinces, especially in the south of the country, driven
to despair by predatory surplus and appropriation system carried out by
armed detachments, were in a state of unrest and revolted. The peasant
rebellion in Tambov province crushed mercilessly by M. Tukhachevskiy,
a would-be red marshal who later fell the victim of the system he applied
a lot of efforts to establish, went down in history. Even 'tolerant' Belarus
did not stand aside, as Slutsk peasants rebelled at the end of 1920. The
uprising was crushed mercilessly, and this page of Belarus' history was
never mentioned for over seventy years.
Cruelty was always characteristic of Bolshevist leaders, e.g. V. Lenin
gave orders 'to execute by shooting and punish severely every swine',
to send regime opponents to concentration camps or to exile them from
the country; F. Dzerzhinsky who was called 'iron' not without reason,
the founder of the XX century Inquisition known as Extraordinary Commission
(later Central Political Administration, People's Commissariat of Home
Affairs, KGB); J. Stalin, a dictator and true grave digger of all humane
revolutionary ideas, not to mention L. Trotsky, the merciless revolutionary
tribune who shed rivers of blood in his time, and many other 'ardent revolutionaries'…
It always held good, under any rule, under tsars and commissars that peasants
suffered first and most of all. These submissive, hardworking and meek
people who fed the whole country, including their torturers, deserve respect
and admiration. Rural population for many centuries and up till the present
day has not got rid of serfdom, stultifying hard work and as F. Engels
put it, of rural life idiocy. A peasant continually carried the burden
of serf labor and on account of his state as a serf he could not and still
can't touch elementary culture. This was and is the practice…
Bolsheviks' plans were, contrary to theories of 'pedants' of all types,
to conduct political a coup, assume power in hand and to advance with
rapid strides to the peaks of culture. Nevertheless, they failed. They
could not succeed, anyway. They needed some cultural basis, in the first
place, to put what they planned into practice. The basis could be acquired
from nowhere, as three quarters of the country's population was illiterate.
The top of the new power was not notable for their high culture and education,
either. V. Lenin who had taken an external degree and had never worked
anywhere, lived comfortably, like a lord, he lived either off his mother
or on the party money. L. Trotsky was a gifted man but he did not study
anywhere. J. Stalin was a half-educated seminarian, an unaccomplished
priest and an expropriator with gangster manners. L. Kaganovich was a
shoemaker, K. Voroshilov was a metalworker from Lugansk, M. Kalinin was
first a peasant in Tver, then he was a turner at Putilov plant. F. Dzerzhinskiy
was even unable to finish a gymnasium. They were all worth one another.
None of them, as a rule, studied anywhere, in most cases they did not
even work. Their universities were tsarist prisons and exiles to Siberia
and Zapolyarye where they lived as if in sanatoriums as compared with
the life in the concentration camps they set up later… They were obsessed
with the only idea to seize the power that would give them access to creature
comforts. They had stormy quarrels with each other after Lenin's death
and killed each other as if they were spiders in a jar. Indeed, there
is some supreme justice…
Yet, we sang the praises of Vladimir Ilyich and 'the most just' party
in the world he established. We did this at all stages of the so-called
socialism and later communism, that is more appropriate to be called cannibalism.
The Bolshevist regime managed to hold its ground for a little over than
seventy years on people's blood that deserves to be called holy, on the
feeling of fear genetically implanted to the Soviet people, the fear imbibed
at their mother's knee, owing to most cruel despotism. Even the future
generations are unlikely to get rid of the fear, we are still afraid to
tell the truth about the power and politics aloud, as well as to evaluate
one event or another…
Among the 100 million innocently killed for the triumph of the radiant
tomorrow the lives of my grandfather Alexander Vikentyevich Kirbai, whose
name I inherited, and his brothers Nikolai and Vatslav were lost, as if
they were unnoticeable grains of sand. My grandfather was mobilized during
World War I. He fought heroically to defend the tsar, faith and his Motherland.
He was awarded with St. George's cross and was wounded in the chest. At
the front, of course, he was persuaded by Bolsheviks to join their ranks
and hoped to be given a piece of land on returning home. The assurances
of Bolshevist agitators seemed to be very sincere. They promised land
to peasants and plants and factories to workers. It was difficult not
to yield to temptation to fling away a chance like this. Many people fell
for the bait and paid for this with their lives afterwards. Twelve years
after the revolution the country faced the notorious forcible collectivization
with all its terrors, exiles and death of the best and most hardworking
part of rural population. Violence went on for several decades. As a result,
my native place today bears signs of devastation and escheat.
When he returned from the front, sure of the gained freedom and justice
of the new people's rule, my grandfather and most of the village poor
started to join for collective farming in the middle of 1920s, although
the experience of the neighboring village Buikovichi that was joined into
a commune several years before turned out to be deplorable. When they
did away with collectivized pigs, cows and horses and fought with each
other for the remainder of foodstuffs in the common pot, they realized
the commune was not their cup of tea.
The commune in Buikovichi went to pieces while things with my grandfather
and those who held the same views were quite good, the peasants made somehow
their both ends met. They did not have enough, though, to live a full
life in winter, nevertheless, they had some potato and grain to live on.
Many people started to doubt whether the revolution, the committees of
the poor and commissars were necessary if their life under the tsar was
no worse. No one expressed the thoughts aloud, naturally. They were already
afraid, as they say, of their own shadow, people expressed their thoughts
in whisper and were cautious at what they said. The best way to behave
was not to say anything, and to see and hear nothing…
Bolshevist propaganda machinery, in the meanwhile, was going forward at
a steady gait. Stalin was developing a reputation of God, tsar and father
for the people. All achievements were linked with the name of the great
helmsman, there was unrestrained praising of the regime, while all failures
and misfortunes were attributed to 'the enemies of the people' who were
looked for more unyieldingly and persistently year after year. As we know,
the one who looks for will always find. Even yesterday's like-minded people
and friends turned into enemies, not all of them at once, first they selected
single people or whole groups. The hands of the ubiquitous People's Commissariat
of Home Affairs reached most people's commissars, the name suggested by
L. Trotsky for ministers, as well as almost all Soviet and party officials,
among them secretaries of kolkhoz party organizations, chairmen of village
soviets, secretaries of party regional committees, chairmen of executive
committees, Politburo members and leaders of Union republics. Then the
turn of the Red Army commanders, commissars and marshals came.
After 1937 it was a different country, neither socialist nor capitalist.
It was an ugly feudal and slaveholding hybrid, a crushed and coerced country
that was once a great power. Fifty years later the country had to go through
greater humiliation, with the roots of this humiliation going down to
the Leninist theory.
About 900 of my fellow-villagers from Zhitkovichi district, both peasants
and workers who were diligent people with their hands toil-hardened, were
executed by shooting throughout the period of several months in 1937 and
1938 in Mozyr, not far from the crossing of roads leading to the former
region center and Kalinkovichi, in the vicinity of Mozyr. All in all,
according to the latest data, 2896 lives were ruined here, including Alexander
Kirbai, Kotsubinsky brothers and many other of my relatives and fellow-villagers.
All of them, as a rule, were young or middle-aged. These were people who
had all their life ahead of them, those who were full of energy and strength,
and those who could bring up children, strengthen their country and defend
it. Yet, they were destined to fall from the bullet of their torturers
with a question on their lips, 'Why?' They were executed for the sake
of utopist socialism, for nationwide happiness and for the future of those
who went on living. Yet, those who remained led a gloomy and cheerless
life…
My native village Rudna suffered more than any other village in the district.
About 40 of its inhabitants were arrested and executed by shooting. The
oldest one, Ivan Shlyakhtin, was 68, the youngest one, Lyudvig Yukhnevich,
was only 28. Lyudvig was executed with his brother Anton, just like brothers
Petr and Nikolai Kotsubinskys, who were my grandmother Marpha's brothers,
Adam and Geronim Rozhalovskys and others. It follows clearly from the
materials of Gomel region KGB department that Nikolai Kirbai was executed
by shooting on September 27, 1937, while his brother Vatslav Kirbai was
executed on December 1. Day after day lives of tens of people in Mozyr
alone were claimed. Yet, who can count the number of those whose lives
were claimed all over the country?
Mass executions started in September 1937. Like any crime, this one was
beyond any reason, and had ideologists and inspirers, as well as executors
of its own. On July 30, 1937 people's commissar Yezhov submitted for consideration
of Stalin's Politburo the operative program 'On repressing former kulaks,
criminals and other anti-Soviet elements'. The document that could by
right be called a blasphemous one enumerated in detail the population
groups that were subject to repressions, ways of punishment; the plan
of carrying out actions in different regions was brought to notice, ways
and methods of investigation, enforcing sentences, as well as its cost
and accountability… The section 'On punishing those who were subject to
repressions and the contingent figures' pointed out that they fell into
two categories, their number considered a target figure. It seemed they
spoke about crop yield or giving in raw product and animals to procurement
stations… Belarus was primarily set the task to repress 12 thousand of
its citizens, of them 2 thousand fell under the first category, i.e. they
had to be executed, while 10 thousand fell under the second category,
i.e. they were meant to be exiled, or sent to concentration camps for
long terms or infrequently, they were sentenced to life. The unauthorized
exceeding the task was strictly forbidden, just like the shortfall. The
plan was approved by the Politburo of the 'most philanthropic and just
party in the world', the 'operation all over the Soviet Union had to be
started as early as August 5'. Rivers of human blood followed the approval
of the document…
…My mother remembered September 19, 1938 for the rest of her life, as
that night a Black Maria approached their house, a Bolshevik and peasant
Alexander Kirbai was taken away to a point of no return before the very
eyes of his children and wife who were struck dumb with terror and understood
absolutely nothing, as well as the astonished fellow villagers who knew
Alexander Kirbai to be an honest and conscientious man and an indefatigable
toiler. He did not escape his brothers' lot, therefore … They were tactful
enough not to ask him to pay the fare to Mozyr. It is known that Nazis,
i.e. national democrats who had the same roots as social democrats, the
Bolsheviks prototypes, included everything into an account and sent it
for a person's relatives to be paid. They took stock of everything, including
keeping costs, the cost of the straw wretched person lied on, digging
a grave for him and even the cost of a bullet to execute him… There was
a prison in the former Orthodox Mikhailovskaya Church in Mozyr. This was
just in the spirit of the times to turn churches into dungeons everywhere,
at best they were turned into storehouses for grain and potato. There
was a pioneers' palace just opposite the prison (or the church?) where
'enemies of the people' were held. One could hear songs and the sound
of bugles and drums from there. Wasn't it really a life of happiness?
The humaneness of security officers can't but win over as they allowed
visits of prisoners. My mother who was 16 at the time came to visit her
father, too. She told later the grandfather was self-assured and said
it was a mistake and that Stalin would look into the matter, so they would
soon release him. One may see how much he believed the leader!
Grandfather's confidence passed on to everyone. They started to sing Stalin
praises, said he was their only hope, he was kind and just and he would
defend the innocent man. Time passed but the grandfather did not return.
They somehow scratched up money and my mother set out on the journey to
Mozyr once again. After several days of trying experiences they were allowed
one more visit. My mother recollected it was hard to recognize the grandfather,
he was depressed and broken, made irrelevant replies and hardly raised
his head. He was crying and did not want his daughter to see his tears.
Still he managed to say he was battered heavily and he signed everything
they wanted. The things that he was charged with, staggered by their absurdity
and foolishness. They accused him of keeping a portable radio transmitter
in the hollow of an oak and of keeping in touch with Pilsudsky. In November
1938 Alexander Kirbai was charged with being an agent of the Polish intelligence
service and sentenced to execution by shooting. The sentence was enforced
without delay. Thus, all Kirbai brothers were crushed by the steamroller
of mass repressions…
Grandmother Marpha was left with five children on her hands to be taken
care about. Lida, the elder one, was 18, the rest were one smaller than
the other - Liodya, Alexandra and the twins Venera and Apollinariy… The
things after the grandfather's arrest were aggravated by humiliation inflicted
by district authorities and some fellow villagers. The family was firmly
stuck with the label 'enemies of the people'. The children were pointed
the finger at, as they were children of 'the enemy of the people'. The
older ones who were LYCLSU (the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League
of the Soviet Union) members were summoned to the district komsomol committee
and offered either to repudiate openly their father who was an enemy of
the people or be expelled from the komsomol. My mother refused the deal
flatly, so she was expelled at once. One of my mother's sisters yielded
to the psychological pressure and … remained a Komsomol member.
What is most terrible is that it was not an isolated case. The state of
affairs assumed a mass scale, the whole of the country suffered. Stalin
advanced a thesis that class struggle would inevitably aggravate as the
country advanced in building socialism and thus 'enriched' Lenin's theory,
in the first place, and, secondly, he freed his hands to exterminate working
peasantry, intelligentsia and the military men with the object of keeping
the country in constant suspense and thus subdued.
His successors 'made happy' thousands of unfortunate families several
decades later by the happy news their fathers and sons were rehabilitated
… posthumously. We are 'grateful' to them for their care and sympathy.
Today quite many people who experienced paralyzing fear for many years
say with their heads held proudly 'Anyway, justice triumphed, they rehabilitated
…' We should add they rehabilitated those who were innocently killed,
humiliated and disgraced. Indeed, one may speak about 'great happiness'
and 'unprecedented' justice…
The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was the only country in the
world with dictatorship of the proletariat fully implemented into practice,
the dictatorship being, in fact, the one usurped by its leaders. It is
terrible that a whole nation found itself to be hostage of ruling murderers
after October 1917. What Bolshevist leaders cannot be denied is their
supreme demagogic ability that enabled them to carry masses and to rule
them later, by means of such key factors and means as violence, lies,
terror and fear… The contemporary reality makes one stop once again, glance
back and think why all this could happen. Why were they able to twist
us round their little finger and why did the tacit consent of the majority
of people lead to this absurd and even wild state of affairs?
There are many reasons why the questions have to be answered. The answer
should primarily be looked for within people themselves, in their scholarship,
culture and traits of character. A deplorable picture emerges, though.
Those who belonged to the top of the hierarchical pyramid were mainly
dull, half-educated or lacked any education at all. People were nominated
to the top or to members of administrative staff solely owing to their
devotion to communist ideas, the party membership being compulsory, as
well as owing to their phrase-mongering skill and the ability to weave
plots and please their bosses … One may ask what kind of state machinery
we were going to obtain? The answer is as clear as noonday. The one that
was unprincipled, incompetent, dim and dull. Thus, having implanted into
human mind the idea that intelligentsia was blue blood and counter-revolutionary,
a hard-working peasant was a kulak, a specialist was a saboteur, the authorities
gained new victims of abundant bloody reaping. What or, to be more exact,
who did they remain with, as a result? They had to do with a mass of slaves
oppressed by excessive toil, dull and featureless, devoted to their leaders
but meek, inactive and lacking any initiative.
The 'true follower' of V.Ulyanov-Lenin needed exactly this kind of people
to implement the adventurous dictatorship. Could a down-and-outer Labutya
resist the temptation to have a free hand at making use of the power he
came to in the village, a district or a region if the power was sole and
unlimited? Stalin's byword 'Cadre determine everything' is both simple
and wise. If modified a little, it would sound 'Cadre would do away with
everything'. The People's Commissariat of Home Affairs cadre who were
the party elite… The ungifted, half-literate and impertinent people ran
the show. The more ungifted, illiterate and impudent they were, the higher
they ranked in the hierarchy.Yet, they were exterminated from time to
time, as they were witnesses and immediate participants of evil deeds.
Stalin did not like to leave any 'traces'. These people humiliated openly
those who had clear heads and were conscience of the people. Let's recollect,
for example, the outstanding scholar Nikolai Vavilov, the poet Osip Mandelstam,
the marshal Vasily Blukher and the peasant Alexander Kirbai… How could
the tradition be reversed and changed? May the present day be a beginning
of the new tradition? One wants to believe this.
The fact that it was not Belarusians who advanced all these misanthropist
theories and put them into practice afterwards may be cold comfort. The
cadre of the new Soviet state started to be established as early as under
Lenin. Russia was a great multinational power, while Belarus, also called
the Northwest province, was entirely under its aegis since the third partition
of Rzech Pospolita in 1795. Lenin's theory seemed to give an answer to
the most acute issue with the main point that after they won Russia back
from the rich for the poor it was necessary to learn how to rule it. They
said any cook should be able to rule the country. It is a well-known fact,
though, that a cook should be able to make soup, similarly, a shoemaker
should be able to make shoes, while a country, an enterprise or a farm
should be ruled and managed by the most intelligent, highly intellectual
and educated specialists.
However, this demagogic theory was never put into practice. Cooks, workers
and peasants did not rule the country. At best, they played the part of
extras in the Supreme Soviet that was outward appearances of people's
power. Yet, the top in power itself, due to their education and intelligence,
never represented the better part of their country's population (we know
that secretaries of district and region committees, as well as officials
of higher ranks, were never notable for their high level of education
and culture), while the depths of the huge country could suggest a wealth
of unclaimed talents and people of natural gifts. Only the selected few
who were reliable and devoted were allowed behind the scenes of the caste.
The problem was they did not think carefully before the coup the issue
of who was going to rule the dull and illiterate country. Bolsheviks conceitedly
seized the power that was unattended at the time, as we cannot regard
the demagogic 'phrase-monger' A. Kerensky to be the ruler of the country
that remained without any government after Nikolai II abdicated the throne.
During the late 1930s Stalin finally formed his 'wolf pack'. Each of them
had to be ready to bite their fellow citizen's, colleague's, relative's,
father's, mother's or their brother's head off at their 'Master's' command
any moment. It was exactly this team that enabled Joseph Vissarionovich
to hold everyone in his fist, to commit violence over those out of favor
with him by somebody else's hands while he himself seemed to keep out,
just and 'pure' and to rule with a rod of iron the whole of the country
that worshipped the leader beyond measure and
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