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[YANKA] Belarusi ordenanosnai [i.e. To Belarus Order-Bearing]

Kupala, Ya.

Item #2574

Minsk: State Publishing House of Belarus, 1937. 204, [4] p. 17,5x13 cm. Original publisher’s cloth binding. Silver gilt on the spine and front cover. Near fine condition.

First edition. Author’s portrait on the frontispiece.

Lifetime edition of Yanka Kupala (1882-1942) -
one of the most important writers in Belarusian
language, the author of legendary ‘Zhive Belarus’’
motto. Prolific in 1910s and 1920s, this collection
of work marks his attempts in 1930s to keep
writing in his mother tongue, when both Belarusian
language and Yanka himself were under attack from
the Soviet officials. This explains the glorification of
Soviet reality in Yanka’s lyrics of 1930s - when the
clouds were gathering.
In 1930, the poet's mother and sister were
dispossessed as kulaks , but they were able to
avoid exile due to the importance of Yanka Kupala's
personality. In the summer of 1930, an article by
Lukasz Bende "The Poet's Path" appeared in the
newspaper " Zvyazda " , in which Yanka Kupala
was declared " the ideologist of bourgeois national
revivalism ". Soon, Kupala began to be summoned
for interrogations at the Belarus Politburo , he was
accused of leading the «Union for the Liberation
of Belarus», the made-up organization, fabricated
by the special services. On November 20, 1930,
after interrogations at Politburo , Yanka Kupala
attempted suicide by slitting his stomach, but was
saved by the doctor Stefan Lutskevich, who lived
next door . In December 1930, the newspaper
"Zvyazda" published a " penitential " letter from
Yanka Kupala, in which the poet admitted to his "
mistakes " and " harmful views ", promised to break
with " kulak nationalist revivalism " and " devote
all his strength to socialist construction ". There is
a version that the real author of the "penitential"
letter was literary critic Lukasz Bende , and Kupala
himself signed it under pressure.

As a result of these events, poet hasn’t published
a book until 1936. He was still under a lot of
pressure and censorship and it’s known that local
NKVD has requested his arrest in 1937 - the year
this book was published, but somehow it didn’t
happen and in 1939 Kupala received the Lenin
prize. He was quite active after 1939 re-unification
with Western Belarus, and actively touring the
west part of Belarus, as well as the annexed Baltic
republics. In the beginning of German invasion he
was in Kaunas. In 1942 he has died mysteriously in
Moscow, falling from 10th floor in the local hotel.

The traditional approach to understanding
Belarusian language and its publications in 1930s
has been that like many national languages of USSR
it has felt out of favor with all-Union authorities,
and the heavy Russification of Belarus began,
continuing in West Belarus in the period after its
annexation in 1939. Indeed, the linguistic elite of
the republic has been the target of the repressions
- the scholars who have been working on modifying
Belarusian grammar and orthography since 1920s
have been under attack - some were arrested and
executed. The most well-known are the cases of
professors Iosif Vasilievič Voŭk-Lievanovič and
Sciapan Michajlavič Niekraševič of Belarusian
Institute of Culture, executed in 1938 and 1937
respectively.
In 1931–1940, the publication of books in Belarusian
in the BSSR decreased from 1,301 to 375, while in
Russian it increased from 38 to 362 titles. Public
use of the literary Belarusian language began to
be associated in the public consciousness with
the possibility of being accused of "nationalism."
However publications like this one, by the classics
of Belarusian poetry, that were not critical of the
official party, were encouraged.

Not in the Worldcat.

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