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"Mikola Yermalovich Dreamed That the Descendants of Leu Sapeha and Kanstantsin Astrozhski Would Show Their Might"

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"Mikola Yermalovich Dreamed That the Descendants of Leu Sapeha and Kanstantsin Astrozhski Would Show Their Might"
Mikola Yermalovich

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the historian who revealed the truth about the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to Belarusians.

Belarus is a country of courageous loners. For example, Uladzimir Karatkevich was the only Belarusian creator of fascinating historical detective stories in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era. Poetess Larysa Heniyush was the only dissident among the former Stalinist prisoners who did not praise the Soviet system, dissociated herself from it in every possible way, and tried not to play by its rules.

Mikola Yermalovich (1921–2000), who would have turned 100 today, was the first historian in the Soviet period who returned pride to Belarusians in their own past, Belsat writes.

He tried to scientifically prove that the Belarusians are not "lords of the plow and spit," that they were the main creators of the powerful European medieval state - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

This former teacher of Belarusian literature at the Maladzechna Teachers' Institute, a modest literary critic, a pensioner (visually impaired, and therefore, retired at 36) has never been a professional historian.

He was not taken seriously by researchers and scientists

In 1968, he wants to publish the book "In the Footsteps of a Myth," but neither Academician Piotr Hlebka nor the legendary historian Mikalai Ulashchyk supports him. They believe that Yermalovich's theory that it was the Belarusians who were the main ones who created the Grand Duchy is unsubstantiated.

Yermalovich did not know Polish, did not read Latin

That is why some important scientific works of Polish researchers, which dealt with the theme of the Grand Duchy, remained without his attention. Yermalovich could not always accurately translate one or another Old Belarusian chronicle, sometimes, he arbitrarily used facts and interpreted historical sources. For this, of course, he was reproached and sometimes criticized today.

He was not touchy

If already in the mid-1980s, at scientific meetings, Yermalovich was pointed out certain inaccuracies in his work; he did not take offense, listened to everything with samurai calm, and carefully made corrections, improved his manuscripts.

Larysa Heniyush and Uladzimir Karatkevich were delighted with him

Heniyush admired his firm unshakable will, she even saw in her dreams this strong, unyielding, and almost blind man who almost every day traveled from Maladzechna to Minsk, sat in archives, libraries and discovered new things about our past to his compatriots, showed that we were influential, independent princes who created national politics, courageous warriors, politicians, from whose actions one should learn.

Karatkevich believed that what Yermalovich wrote uplifted Belarusians, gave them strength, faith, and inspired contemporaries to strive to match their ancestors.

He wrote about Lenin for the show

His first officially published book, "A Name Dear to Belarusians" (1970), was dedicated to Vladimir Lenin. In parallel with this outwardly apologetic work, Yermalovich actively and illegally expands samizdat, in the 1960s he publishes the magazine Snowdrop, and in the 1970s - Hutarki, where he writes the truth about both our past and today's realities, in which his contemporaries were forced to live.

Yermalovich's finest hour falls on perestroika and the first years of the revival

The late 1980s - early 1990s were actually a stellar time for Mikola Yermalovich. One after another, his books are published: "In the footsteps of one myth" in 1989, "Ancient Belarus: Polatsk and Novaharod periods" in 1990, "Ancient Belarus: Vilnia period" in 1994. At this time, Yermalovich makes a lot of speeches, and his lectures on energy and theatrical interactivity are unique. No historian could match Yermalovich in artistry. Both schoolchildren and the older generation listened with great interest about Rahneda, Vitaut, Keistut, Yahaila, perceived what they heard as an exciting action-packed series, from which it is impossible to tear yourself away.

His, perhaps, not quite factually accurate books, did more for the awakening of the national consciousness of the people than the numerous professionally impeccable scientific works of experienced opponents.

The task of Yermalovich (like Karatkevich and Heniyush) was to prove that Belarus is not a country of slaves and lackeys who only suffer and do not react to violence.

Just in the year of his tragic death (Yermalovich fell under the wheels of a taxi on April 5, 2000, when he was going to the post office), he publishes the book "The Belarusian State of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania," where he carries out the idea with constant persistence - namely we were the creators of one of the most powerful medieval states in Europe, we are the people who can show off their strength and delight with culture, art, and inflexibility. Published at a time when totalitarianism in Belarus began to intensify again, this book was supposed to awaken calmly indifferent residents of a state located in the center of Europe to struggle, disagreement, and resistance.

Yermalovich dreamed that the descendants of Leu Sapeha and Kanstantsin Astrozhski would show their might.

Perhaps the dream of this great man will soon come true, and the time when Belarus will begin to approach in its strength and greatness to the beloved Grand Duchy of Lithuania will still come.

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