Vladimir Neklyaev Turns 80
3- 9.07.2026, 15:23
The poet is marking his anniversary while in yet another period of forced exile in Poland.
The renowned Belarusian poet, prose writer, and social and political activist Vladimir Neklyaev is turning 80.
The poet is marking this anniversary while in yet another period of forced exile in Poland.
Vladimir Prokofievich Neklyaev was born on July 9, 1946, in Smorgon to a Russian father and a Belarusian mother. He spent his childhood in Krevo—an ancient town, which, in an interview with the website Charter97.org, he called his main source of inspiration and his “personal universe.”
As a young man, Neklyaev was passionate about music and boxing. His early education was not in the humanities: in 1966, he graduated from the Minsk Electrotechnical College of Communications, after which he worked as a communications technician in the North and in Siberia. Upon returning to Minsk, he worked as a radio mechanic.
Later, he earned a degree by correspondence from the Faculty of Philology at the Minsk Pedagogical Institute, and then studied at the Gorky Literary Institute in Moscow. He wrote his first poems in Russian, but during his studies he switched entirely to Belarusian.
Starting in 1972, Neklyaev worked in journalism. Over the years, he served as senior editor of literary and dramatic programs for Belarusian television, as well as editor-in-chief of the magazine *Krynytsa* and the weekly *Literatura i Mastatsva*. From 1998 to 2001, he headed the Union of Belarusian Writers, and from 2005 to 2009, the Belarusian PEN Center.
Emigration and Politics
In the late 1990s, the leadership of the Union of Belarusian Writers, headed by Neklyaev, openly opposed the creation of the so-called Union State of Belarus and Russia. Amid intensifying political pressure, he left the country in 1999 and lived in Poland and Finland for several years. He returned to Belarus in 2003 following the death of the writer Vasily Bykov.
In 2010, Neklyaev ran for president.
On December 19, 2010, on election day, a procession of his supporters was attacked by security forces on their way to Independence Square. Neklyaev himself was brutally beaten and subsequently hospitalized with a traumatic brain injury. That same night, KGB officers took him from the hospital to a pretrial detention center. Later, a court found the politician guilty of organizing actions that grossly violated public order and sentenced him to two years of imprisonment, with a suspended sentence. In 2013, he was finally released from serving his sentence. Vladimir Neklyaev became one of the leaders of the Belarusian National Congress and actively participated in protests.
During the 2020 revolution, he openly supported the demonstrators and took part in marches involving tens of thousands of people in Minsk.
After Russia launched a full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022, Neklyaev left Belarus. He currently lives in Wrocław.
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