Youth Of Belarus

I peer at rare photographs of BNR founding fathers. I see young people, who will have to pay a heavy price for their courage.

They are leaving the house in Serpukhovskaya Street (current Volodarskogo) after the adoption of the third Charter on the Declaration of the Belarusian People's Republic on March 25, 1918. Who are these people over there? Members of Rada and the first BNR government.

Head of the People's Secretariat Yazep Voronko would turn 27 those days. Tomash Grib was only 23 years old, Kastus Yezovitov – 24, Arkadz Smolich – 26, Liavon Zayats – 28, Paluta Badunova – 32. Ideologist and inspirer Anton Lutskevich is 34. Yan Sereda, Vasil Zacharka and Piotra Krečeŭski are a bit older – they are 38-40 years old.

They have just announced Belarus an independent country to the whole world. They are young, and the young are brave, the young are desperate. They are overwhelmed with enthusiasm from what they’ve done and what they still have to do. A long night they’ve spent debating is forgotten, their chests bloat with pride and hope.

Elder people look indulgently at the desperate acts of the young, realizing that nothing is going to work out and their efforts are in vain. But one can stay calm and honest with oneself only in one case: if one has already tried. These people in Serpukhovskaya Street believed in a snowball's chance in hell, they were doing their bests. They are the youth of Belarus.

They hardly amounted to several dozen, the war was already going to start the next day, and they would be scattered around the world. And there wouldn’t be annual meetings, parades on the anniversaries of BNR independence ... Because there wouldn’t exist such a state. The country would be divided, and two flesh-eating birds, flying down from the coats of arms of the neighboring gardens, would feel the masters there.

Many of the BNR founding fathers would have to run from country to country, and would not be able to understand those who were happy in the oblivion. Vilna, Kovno, Riga, Prague, Chicago were outside the window. There was one question around – why? And he (Piotra, Vasil, Tomash, Yazep) – one of them – was striking the keys of his typewriter to take out one common for all word: Belarus, Belarus, Belarus.

Many of them would not be able to live outside the country and return to the Bolshevik BSSR, where they would be in full view. There would be layoffs, first and second arrests, prisoner transports, expulsions, and finally shootings. There would be strange places and graves: Anton Lutskevich and Vaclav Lastouski – Saratov, Arkadz Smolich – Omsk, Liavon Zayats – Ufa. Paluta Badunova and Kastus Yezovitov would be shot in Minsk.

Yan Sereda – the first chairman (president) of the BNR Rada – would be out of a tree cutting camp in Krasnoyarsk region in November 1943. He would be an old man, having survived hunger and disease, and hardly remembering Ian, he used to be.

There would be cold and hunger around again, and nobody would care a curse for a former political prisoner, having nowhere to go. He would at least reach the corner of the barrack. And there is no monument, no street, even many years hence in an independent country, which does not know whether he survived that winter.

... Spring and youth were in Minsk on March 25, 1918.

Ruslan Harbachiou, Salidarnasts