BPR Rada Calls For Extensive Celebration Of Vasil Bykau’s 100th Anniversary

The writer was in the front row of the fight for the restoration of independence of Belarus.

June 19 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vasil Bykau. On this occasion, the Rada of the Belarusian People's Republic appealed to Belarusians to widely celebrate this date “and demonstrate our unity in protecting national values.”

“Bykau raised Belarusian literature to the world level and was in the front row of the struggle for the restoration of the independence of Belarus, for national revival. He was not afraid to speak the truth to the dictator’s face, and had to spend the last years of his life in a foreign land,” the posted appeal says. “Until now, in the capital of Belarus, despite many years of public demands, there is neither Vasil Bykau Street nor a monument to the outstanding writer. “Bykau’s days” in his small homeland, in the Vushachy district, which annually gathered fans of fine literature, have also been curtailed.”

“Belarus will revive if it does not submit to someone else’s power,” the authors of the appeal recall the words of Vasil Bykau.

“Under a truly Belarusian government, the writer’s anniversary would be a national event, but the current pro-Moscow regime is imposing other people’s holidays,” the appeal emphasizes.

The BPR Rada notes that while the memory of Vasil Bykau is not properly immortalized at the state level, Belarusians at home and abroad have “both the reason and the obligation to demonstrate to the whole world “the name and power of the Belarusian”, embodied both in the figure of the great writer and in the faces the best daughters and sons of Belarus fighting for the freedom of their country.”