The Great Terror and Belarusian letters

The review Nasha Niva, founded in 1906, had given Belarusian a modern literature in some twenty years: peasant prose, avant-garde poetry, theatre, translations. On the night of 29 to 30 October 1937 more than a hundred of the country's intellectuals were shot in the NKVD cellars in Minsk, and that date recurs in almost every entry in this theme. Haretski, Charot, Dudar and many others disappeared there, most of them before the age of forty. Those who survived, like Chorny, came out of the interrogations broken and died soon after.

works 5

• NarrativeTwo SoulsДзве душыMaksim Haretski · 1919An officer who discovers his peasant origins, amid the camps of the civil war.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryБосыя на вогнішчыMihas Charot · 1922not translated into EnglishThe revolution seen as a blaze into which the poor throw themselves, in the Belarus of the occupations.LiteraturePublic domain
• PoetryО Беларусь, мая шыпшынаUladzimir Dubouka · 1925not translated into EnglishA short lyric poem of 1925, in which a wild flower stands in for the homeland, in the young Soviet Belarusian republic.Literature
• NovelСястраKuzma Chorny · 1927not translated into EnglishIn Minsk, characters in search of a meaning for their lives, caught above all in their thoughts.Literature
• PoetryВежаAles Dudar · 1928not translated into EnglishAn old tower laden with legends, which the radio turns into a relay for distant voices: a poem of the new era.Literature