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Alexievich On Night Of Poets: Learning To Be Belarusians

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Alexievich On Night Of Poets: Learning To Be Belarusians

Some day children will ask their parents: where is our Belarus?

The Night of the Shot Poets was held in Kurapaty in the evening of October 29 for the second year in a row. On that night in 1937, there was a peak of executions of the national Belarusian elite by the Soviets, nn.by writes.

Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich has addressed the participants of the Night of the Shot Poets:

– For several centuries, our national spirit has been destroyed in the most barbaric ways, especially in Stalin's time – they were destroying the elite: writers, scientists, rural intelligentsia. Black gaping holes should have swallowed us up, but in spite of everything we are alive. We have our own country, our own language. We are alive! But in the gaps left, each of us must take upon himself a part of the work of those destroyed. The time will come, and we will follow the trail of Stalin's crimes and put up monuments there.

Kurapaty is a symbol of our memory and our future. Today, we need these supports to hold our ground in the dark times, when materiality and fear have defeated the spirit. Lies have defeated the truth. Betrayal has overcome the sense of national path.

On such a night, there must have been hundreds of thousands of people at this place, but there are not so many of us as we would like – for many, the past is still hidden in the darkness of lies and consumerism. It's a banal thing, when you hear people saying for themselves: I cannot risk my work, they say, my success, the system will immediately throw me overboard, and how will I feed and teach children, for what? But the national spirit cannot be relegated to money or career making, someday children will ask their parents: where is our Belarus? Where is our time? Where is our Belarusian history?

I do not believe that human life disappears without a trace. Here we are surrounded by the shadows of our best ancestors. Suffering is also a form of knowledge. Our ancestors, whose breath is scattered here, teach us to distinguish dignity from betrayal, the future from the past. Here we learn to make a choice – up, as the people of their land, or down – into mankurtism.

But the best thing we can say today is to read poems. I believe that this language is heard there, above, in the other world...

We are learning to be Belarusians.

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