State-Run Magazine "Maladosts" Lost All Employees

Since July, the magazine has been transferred to another structure.

The magazine Maladosts has no staff left. Since early July, the magazine will be published by the publishing house Mastatskaya Litaratura, reports Nasha Niva.

At the beginning of the year, Maladosts used to employ five people.

But in February, Editor-in-Chief Sviatlana Vatsinava was fired. A replacement could not be found, so as of today the editorial board consisted of four people (deputy editor-in-chief and three editors of departments).

However, starting from July, the magazine is moving to a different structure. Earlier it was published at the publishing house Zviazda. Now Maladosts, as well as the magazines Polymia and Nioman, are being transferred to the publishing house Mastatskaya Litaratura.

In the light of these transformations, the editions underwent reductions. A few people from each editorial board were offered to continue their work.

In Maladosts, they offered prose editor Maryja Strakh and publicist editor Hanna Varanko to continue their work. But they refused and - as young professionals - got reassigned.

"There is no desire to be a journalist," Maryja Strakh commented briefly.

"I came to Maladosts in the summer of 2020. It was cool and cozy in the editorial office, we all supported each other back then. In winter Sviatlana was fired, and we already understood that it was the end of the era," says Hanna Varanko. "So that Sviatlana was not ashamed of us, we tried with our small editorial office in a small room in Victory Square to make a good magazine, as much as possible in our conditions. And, I suppose, we partially succeeded, although not everything we wanted to put on the pages of the magazine saw the light of day.

There will be a completely different edition of Maladosts with a different content, design and probably even a different logo in Mastatskaya Litaratura. I know they also want to abolish the age limit and publish literary authors 35+.

So it seems logical that we're all leaving together: with each other and with our "maladosts." If it wasn't for the assignment, to be honest, I would have done it a lot earlier."

Deputy editor-in-chief Dzmitry Rubin and poetry editor Mikola Adam were not asked to continue their work.

As Mikola Adam explained, he came to work on the condition that he would be working remotely.

"Such a format is unacceptable to the new management. The employee has to be in the workplace. To sit all the hours that are set out for him to work. I guess the Internet and the computer are a taboo."

According to him, there were other reasons for leaving, which were connected to the Union of Writers of Belarus. Mikola Adam left its ranks after the expulsion of writer Anatol Kudlasevich. "We, those who stood up for him, were allegedly "tried".

As Dzmitry Rubin noted, "in fact, there was a conditional offer. That is, if we really wanted to, we could have asked for a place to stay, or to be taken somewhere. But I didn't want to beg."

"I was finishing my work here, feeling just a duty toward the magazine, the readers, the authors. I didn't want to move to a place where they were going to wipe out all of our work of the last few years and go back to the 1980s, no desire to do that."

It is not known yet who will be the new staff members of Maladosts.

In the creative circles Maladosts was considered to be the best state-owned literary publication.

However, the May issue circulation was only 597 copies.

Yet, this is a standard figure for budget magazines.