Belarusian Quotes

Political calculation and local suffering do not entirely explain the participation in these pogroms. Violence against Jews served to bring the Germans and elements of the local non-Jewish populations closer together. Anger was directed, as the Germans wished, toward the Jews, rather than against collaborators with the Soviet regime as such. People who reacted to the Germans' urging knew that they were pleasing their new masters, whether or not they believed that the Jews were responsible for their own woes. By their actions they were confirming the Nazi worldview. The act of killing Jews as revenge for NKVD executions confirmed the Nazi understanding of the Soviet Union as a Jewish state. Violence against Jews also allowed local Estonians, Latvian, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles who had themselves cooperated with the Soviet regime to escape any such taint. The idea that only Jews served communists was convenient not just for the occupiers but for some of the occupied as well. Yet this psychic nazification would have been much more difficult without the palpable evidence of Soviet atrocities. The pogroms took place where the Soviets had recently arrived and where Soviet power was recently installed, where for the previous months Soviet organs of coercion had organized arrests, executions, and deportations. They were a joint production, a Nazi edition of a Soviet text. P. 196

The Germans murdered about as many non-Jews as Jews during the war, chiefly by starving Soviet prisoners of war (more than three million) and residents of besieged cities (more than a million) or by shooting civilians in “reprisals” (the better part of a million, chiefly Belarusians and Poles).

Together, by 2005, the contiguous parts of the Belarusian and Ukrainian zones made up a total area of more than 4,700 square kilometers of northwestern Ukraine and southern Belarus, all of it rendered officially uninhabitable by radiation. Beyond the borders of the evacuated land, the contamination of Europe with radionuclides from the explosion had proved widespread and long lasting: for years after the accident, meat, dairy products, and produce raised on farms from Minsk to Aberdeen and from France to Finland were found laced with strontium and cesium and had to be confiscated and destroyed. In Britain, restrictions on the sale of sheep grazed on the hill farms of North Wales would not be lifted until 2012. Subsequent studies found that three decades after the accident, half of the wild boar shot by hunters in the forests of the Czech Republic were still too radioactive for human consumption. At

He had worked damn hard and prospered. Now it was time to live. He even thought he might get it up tonight and surprise his gorgeous Maggie; then it was Israel and the Pharaohs. Stopping at his front door he took a deep intake of the free English air and smiled contentedly; England was home and so was he, this time for good. He went in the front door and called out for her as he had done so many times before, 'Maggie . . . I'm home sweetheart!' He closed the door and hesitated for a moment, she was usually in his arms by now, planting a sweet little kiss on his expectant, eager lips. She had not been her best lately, complaining of headaches and spending a lot of time down at the library; but today was different, it was retirement day. Aha! This could be a surprise, he thought hanging up his coat. Calling out again, he rubbed his hands together and started to climb the stairs to wash up before tea. This is definitely a surprise . . . no smell of any grub! His whistling stopped abruptly half way up when he saw a darkened figure appear on the landing, pointing a gun at him. A finger tightened and the weapon jolted, sending screeching Belarusian memories echoing across his subconscious. The blast lifted him off his feet sending him to the floor below. The last image of Cedric Boban's life on earth was the flash of a sawn-off shotgun; which fired from a few feet, took his life and most of his upper torso away. The slate was clean, the screeching culled. His assailant moved halfway down before jumping over the banister to avoid the bloody mess on the stairs. Maggie walked steadily into the hall from the living room. She gave a little smile and took the small sawn-off shotgun from the gloved hands of the assassin,

These marches, which left surviving Jews in Germany itself, were the last of the Nazi atrocities. The Belarusian Front of the Red Army began to shell Berlin on 20 April 1945, Hitler’s birthday; by early May it had met the Ukrainian Front in the German capital. Berlin fell, and the war was over. Hitler had ordered subordinates to apply a scorched earth policy to Germany itself, but he was not obeyed. Although much young German life was wasted in the defense of Berlin, Hitler could effect no further policies of mass killing.71

Assange made Shamir WikiLeaks’ associate in Russia. Shamir gave the KGB in Belarus information it could use when he printed WikiLeaks documents that told the dictatorship there had been conversations between the opposition and the US. Shamir went to Belarus, praised the rigged elections and compared Natalia Koliada and her friends to football hooligans. Whether he handed over a batch of US cables without blacking out the names of Belarusian political activists who had spoken to American officials was an open question.

И вот, спустя некоторое время, случилось чудо: в стран, где когда-то книг были миллионы, не осталось ни одного печатного издания. Все было уничтожено, причем не государством - тут его возможностей просто не хватило бы! - а обычным гражданами. Их страхами попасть за решетку в рамках "показательного дела". Их паранойей. Их предосторожностями.

- Вечность - в мове, - повторил он мысль, с которой начинал. - Это как? - Вот так. Не зря в христианских книгах написано, что сначала было слово, и слово было Бог. После смерти мы живем в мове. Бессмертие - в ней. - Подождите, Как можно жить в мове? - все не мог понять я. Потому что, как я уже говорил, я от природы не очень умен. - Душа человека - это то, как он говорит. Уходя из мира, он не исчезает, потому что его словами, поговорками и выражениями продолжают говорить другие. - Это как следы на снегу? - попробовал я подобрать метафору, вспомнив, как гулял зимой и узнавал свои же следы. - Нет, скорее, как тропа через трясину. Каждый из нас речью протаптывает такую тропу, по которой пойдут и другие. И пока тропа не зарастет, живет и душа.

Challenged by the surge of nationalisms in many parts of the former Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks showed a great deal of political skill and flexibility. Their apparent willingness to make significant concessions to the nationalities, in sharp contrast to the White forces’ uncompromising dedication to a “one and indivisible Russia,” was a contributing factor to their victory in the Civil War.

I told Benny that I had plans to go to Belarus and Lithuania t see the places where our European relatives had lived and died. Halfway through the week, Benny decided to join me on what he called the 'roots trip,' and by the end of the week Shimon and his oldest son, Amir, and Benny's son Rotem had signed on too. I enlisted my daughter Emily, who speaks Russian. In the middle of May 2011, the six of us met at a small wooden inn deep in the lush green Belarusian countryside. Together we visited Rakov and Volozhin; we walked through the crumbling hall of the Volozhin yeshiva, which has survived two world wars and the death of its students and teachers; we scouted out the street near Rakov's brick Catholic church where Sonia, Doba, and Etl grew up. We traveled to Vilna - now Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania - and searched out the two apartment buildings where Doba and Shepseleh lived and raised their sons. We drove out to Ponar to say kaddish at the cratered pit where Shepseleh and tens of thousands of Lithuanian Jews lay buried. We walked to a hillside at the edge of Volozhin and said kaddish over the pit where Chaim's brother Yishayahu may have been shot. We said kaddish in the small grassy clearing where the Rakov synagogue burned with Etl and her children inside.

In Belarus, as elsewhere, local German policy was conditioned by general economic concerns. By 1943, the Germans were worried more about labor shortages than about food shortages, and so their policy in Belarus shifted. As the war against the Soviet Union continued and the Wehrmacht took horrible losses month upon month, German men had to be taken from German farms and factories and sent to the front. Such people then had to be replaced if the German economy was to function. Hermann Göring issued an extraordinary directive in October 1942: Belarusian men in suspicious villages were not to be shot but rather kept alive and sent as forced laborers to Germany. People who could work were to be 'selected' for labor rather than killed - even if they had taken up arms against Germany. By now, Göring seemed to reason, their labor power was all that they could offer to the Reich, and it was more significant than their death. Since the Soviet partisans controlled ever more Belarusian territory, ever less food was reaching Germany in any case. If Belarusian peasants could not work for Germany in Belarus, best to force them to work in Germany. This was very grim reaping. Hitler made clear in December 1942 what Göring had implied: the women and children, regarded as less useful as labor, were to be shot. "This was a particularly spectacular example of the German campaign to gather forced labor in the East, which had begun with the Poles of the General Government, and spread to Ukraine before reaching this bloody climax in Belarus. By the end of the war, some eight million foreigners from the East, most of them Slavs, were working in the Reich. It was a rather perverse result, even by the standards of Nazi racism: German men went abroad and killed millions of 'subhumans,' only to import millions of other 'subhumans' to do the work in Germany that the German men would have been doing themselves - had they not been abroad killing 'subhumans.' The net effect, setting aside the mass killing abroad, was that Germany became more of a Slavic land than it had ever been in history. (The perversity would reach its extreme in the first months of 1945, when surviving Jews were sent to labor camps in Germany itself. Having killed 5.4 million Jews as racial enemies, the Germans then brought Jewish survivors home to do the work that the killers might have been doing themselves, had they not been abroad killing.)

Sitting in the jazz bars or the supper clubs, the worn and the well-to-do would be nodding their heads in smiling acknowledgement that the Belarusian immigrant had it right: that somehow, despite the coming of winter, autumn in New York promises an effervescent romance which makes one look to the Manhattan skyline with fresh eyes and feel: It's good to live it again.

The ancestors of modern Ukrainians lived in dozens of premodern and modern principalities, kingdoms, and empires, and in the course of time they took on various names and identities. The two key terms that they used to define their land were “Rus’” and “Ukraine.” (In the Cyrillic alphabet, Rus’ is spelled Pycь: the last character is a soft sign indicating palatalized pronunciation of the preceding consonant.) The term “Rus’,” brought to the region by the Vikings in the ninth and tenth centuries, was adopted by the inhabitants of Kyivan Rus’, who took the Viking princes and warriors into their fold and Slavicized them. The ancestors of today’s Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians adopted the name “Rus’” in forms that varied from the Scandinavian/Slavic “Rus’” to the Hellenized “Rossiia.” In the eighteenth century, Muscovy adopted the latter form as the official name of its state and empire.

The vote for Ukraine’s independence spelled the end of the Soviet Union. Those participating in the referendum had changed not only their own fate but the course of world history. Ukraine freed the rest of the Soviet republics still dependent on Moscow. Yeltsin made a final attempt to convince Kravchuk to sign a new union treaty when he met with him at a Belarusian hunting lodge in Belavezha Forest on December 8, 1991. Kravchuk refused, citing the results of the referendum in all oblasts of Ukraine, including Crimea and the east.

The change in the geopolitical aims of the Kyivan princes, from Yaroslav the Wise to Andrei Bogoliubsky, reflects the reduction of their political loyalties from the entire realm of Kyivan Rus’ to a number of principalities defined by the term “Rus’ Land” and eventually to peripheral principalities that grew strong enough to rival Kyiv in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Historians look to those principality-based identities for the origins of the modern East Slavic nations. The Vladimir-Suzdal principality served as a forerunner of early modern Muscovy and, eventually, of modern Russia. Belarusian historians look to the Polatsk principality for their roots. And Ukrainian historians study the principality of Galicia-Volhynia to uncover the foundations of Ukrainian nation-building projects. But all those identities ultimately lead back to Kyiv, which gives Ukrainians a singular advantage: they can search for their origins without ever leaving their capital.

The disintegration of the USSR in 1991 and the emergence of fifteen independent nation-states on its ruins demonstrated to the outside world that the Soviet Union was not Russia, despite the best efforts of the Western media to convince its readers to the contrary by using the two terms interchangeably for decades. Political developments in the post-Soviet space indicated that the definition of the USSR as Russia was wrong not only in relation to the non-Slavic republics of the former Soviet Union but also with regard to the Ukrainians and Belarusians, the East Slavic cousins of the Russians.

Сказаць праўду, Лабановічу трохі страшна. Страшна гэтага новага павароту ў жыцці, бо ён немінуча павінен пайсці па дарозе, дзе так многа небяспекі, дзе на кожным кроку цябе можа чакаць ліхая прыгода. У яго ўяўленні рысуюцца арышты, астрогі, ссылка. З таго часу, як пачаў настаўнік весці сваю патайную работу, ён адчувае нейкі непакой і трывогу. Калі яму здаралася бачыць тут якога-небудзь паліцэйскага чына, мімаволі думалася, ці не па яго справе зʼяўляецца гэты прадстаўнік улады. Нервы ўвесь час былі трохі ўзняты, і ён стаў падазроным і асцярожным, асабліва калі да яго пачалі даходзіць сякія-такія чуткі аб яго паводзінах. Але патрошку ён прывык да мыслі, што можа папасціся, што яго заарыштуюць, і перастаў гэтага баяцца. Наадварот, яму часамі арышт здаваўся прынадным, не пазбаўленым своеасаблівай прыемнасці. Чаму ж і не пацярпець за праўду? Чаму не спрабаваць лёсу «крамольніка»? Чаму не зазнаць астрожнага жыцця? Астрог таксама ёсць школа, дзе жыццё пазнаецца больш глыбока і востра. Апроч усяго гэтага, тут ёсць і пэўная рызыка, ёсць асалода змагання. Ты ведаеш, што за кожным тваім крокам сочаць, што, калі ўсё выкрыецца, цябе будуць лавіць, будуць судзіць, але ты таксама можаш не паддавацца, выкручвацца, весці сапраўднае змаганне за сваё права жыць на волі.

Ужо адзін той факт, сведкам якога быў Лабановіч яшчэ на Палессі і які глыбока запаў яму ў памяць — зʼяўленне поезда пасля доўгай забастоўкі чыгуначнікаў,— пахіснуў яго веру ў перамогу рэвалюцыі. Цяпер жа не падлягала сумненню, што ў барацьбе з народам брала верх самаўладства. Варта было абегла зірнуць на хроніку, што змяшчалася на старонках тагачасных часопісаў, на царскія загады, на розныя цыркуляры, каб пераканацца ў гэтым. Усё, што хоць у нязначнай меры ішло ад свабоды і прагрэсу, бязлітасна нішчылася пятамі царскіх сатрапаў. А побач з гэтым вынікалі чарнасоценныя манархічныя саюзы. На паверхню ўсплывалі такія імёны, як Дубровін, Булацаль, Грынгмут, Пурышкевіч і іншыя людскія пацяробкі. Ім была дана поўная свабода ў іх чалавеканенавісніцкай дзейнасці і агітацыі за цара, за прастол і «ісконныя ўстоі» царскага самаўладства.

Добра быць аднаму ў дарозе, асабліва тады, калі надворʼе спрыяе табе, а на сэрцы спакойна, і нішто не абцяжарвае твае душы, нішто не замінае думаць аб чым хочаш, або даваць поўную волю самым дзівосным і далёкім ад сапраўднага марам. Ідзеш сабе і радуешся, што жывеш на свеце, радуешся, што ў цябе ёсць вочы, каб аглядаць прасторы і малюнкі зямлі, і вушы, каб слухаць разнастайныя гукі, несціханую музыку жыцця. Радуешся небу і сонцу, кучаравым хмарам, лагоднаму ветру і людзям, што сустракаюцца на шляху.

Нам трэба праверыць: што мы і хто мы? Ці мы — балотная вада, якой няма ходу, ці мы — крынічны струмень, жывы, свежы, той струмень, што пакідае ўбаку гнілую балотную ваду і ўсё імкнецца наперад і наперад па чысценькім жоўтым пясочку?

Верыць народ, што прыйдуць лепшыя дні. Вось і трэба жыць гэтай верай, не зважаючы на тое, што «покі сонца ўзыдзе, раса вочы выесць».

Як лепей называць па-беларуску: чай ці гарбата? — Як ні назавеш,— усё будзе добра, абы смачна.

Мы, беларусы, хітрыя — чорта абдурым.

Вялікую радасць перажыў Лабановіч, калі яму прыслалі першы нумар першай беларускай газеты. Ён чытаў і перачытваў кожны артыкул, кожны верш і карэспандэнцыю. Усё гэта было так нова, так нязвыкла. Найбольш сардэчны водгук на зʼяўленне беларускай газеты пачуў ён ад сялян свайго сяла Мікуцічы, куды знарок хадзіў пачытаць людзям напісанае іх простым, родным мужыцкім словам. І сам Лабановіч стаў гарачым і адданым прыхільнікам і прапагандыстам свайго роднага слова, на якім друкавалася газета. Але кожны нумар газеты падпадаў пад рэпрэсіі царскіх чыноўнікаў і цэнзуры. Газету затрымлівалі, штрафавалі, канфіскавалі і, нарэшце, зусім забаранілі, а рэдактара засудзілі на год заключэння ў крэпасць. Замест забароненай пачала выходзіць газета болей памяркоўная, з ліберальна-буржуазным ухілам. Аднак і гэту рахманую газету царскія чыноўнікі заціскалі рознымі прыдзіркамі, прыгняталі штрафамі і белымі плямамі.

Union of Lublin (1569), which created the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The borders between the kingdom and the duchy were realigned within the commonwealth, transferring most of the Ukrainian territories to the kingdom and leaving the Belarusian ones within the boundaries of the duchy. The union of Poland and Lithuania thus meant the separation of Ukraine and Belarus, and in that regard we can hardly overestimate the importance of the Union of Lublin. It would initiate the formation of the territory of modern Ukraine and its intellectual appropriation by the local elites.

Hitler wanted not only to eradicate the Jews; he wanted also to destroy Poland and the Soviet Union as states, exterminate their ruling classes, and kill tens of millions of Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles).

The picnic table next to mine was full of old moaners complaining about how the youth of today have it so easy. Well, of course they do. With zero-hour contracts, piles of student debt and house prices containing more zeroes than a Belarusian bank note, they don't know they're born.