Lionik Tarasevich: Alliance Of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine Is Possible

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was already such a project.

Belarusian artist Lionik Tarasevich, who lives in the Bialystok region of Poland, received the Jerzy Giedroyc prize. If the Belarusian Jerzy Giedroyc award is a literary prize, then in Poland there are two such awards — by the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita and the University of Mary Curie-Sklodowska. They are awarded for the continuation of the mission of the Polish cultural and political figure Jerzy Giedroyc on the unification of the peoples of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Rzeczpospolita into a joint project.

Euroradio asked Lionik Tarasevich, the laureate of the award by the newspaper Rzeczpospolita, whether an alliance of Belarus, Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine was possible.

— Such an idea exists. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was already such a project. At present, everything depends on political affairs, the policies of states that are interested in this. Everything is possible, but we need money, people and states that would like to do it.

The artist believes that the intellectual and economic borders between Belarus and Poland no longer exist, they remain only in the political section:

— Since 1980-1990 the connections were already very close. The Basowisza music festival further strengthened them. At the moment I'm looking with some horror that there are still some boundaries.

After all, if we are talking about the intellectual world, for us, artists, people of literature and music, this border is artificial, it does not exist. I think that there is no border in the economic and intellectual form, the border only remains in the political form.

Jerzy Giedroyc published a monthly magazine "Culture" in Paris for over half a century, which became a symbol of intellectual struggle against communism and divisions in Europe.