A further two lines leave even less doubt of the meaning:

Няма розніцы, Бэнгалія,
Душыць хан ці камісар.11

The disguise was too transparent for the censors, however, and the poem was never published (the manuscript appears to have been lost during World War II). Astrejka was expelled from university (as a National Democrat, of course), imprisoned and, in 1933, exiled to Irbit in Western Siberia for five years. He was shot in 1937 and posthumously rehabilitated twenty years later. The setting of literary works in other countries and at other times is, of course, a widely practiced form of Aesopic writing.12 In the case of Soviet Belarusian writers, Western Belarus under Polish rule was a convenient setting for oppositional works.13

The fate of another outspoken writer, Kandrat Krapiva (pen-name of Kandrat Atrachovič, 1896-1991) was far less dramatic than Astrejka’s, and Krapiva, fabulist, satirist, playwright and, later, lexicographer, became a pillar of the Soviet establishment. He was born of peasant stock in the village of Nikok, Ihumien district of Miensk province. Serving first in the Imperial Army and then in the Red Army during the Soviet-Polish war (1920-23), he was educated at the Belarusian State University, beginning to publish his satires as early as 1922. Like the other writers mentioned so far, Krapiva joined ‘Maładniak’ before becoming a member of ‘Uzvyšša’, and produced some witty and trenchant Aesopic fables, amongst which the following stand out: ‘Hanarysty parsiuk’ (The proud piglet, 1927) and ‘Samanadziejny koć’ (The presumptuous horse, 1927) which mock the arrogance and complacency of the Bolsheviks; ‘Figa na talercy’ (Fig on a plate, 1927) satirizes empty official promises, ‘Hramafon’ (Gramophone, 1927) the drive for conformity, and ‘Dekret’ (The decree, 1928) the senselessness of mass terror. Particularly interesting is ‘Saromlivy’ (Shamefaced, 1927) in which Krapiva cleverly compares Soviet society, which was becoming increasingly above censure, to someone suffering from a shameful disease who makes the condition worse and potentially fatal by not admitting to being a victim of the disease. One of the best known and most successful of Krapiva’s fables at this time was ‘Sava, asioł i sonca’ (The owl, the ass and the sun, 1927), a clear commentary on the attempts of the Communist authorities (the owl) to hide truth and enlightenment (the sun), aided by their satraps (the ass). A further three lines were added before it was published in a collection of fables five years later, shifting the implied target of Communism to the express target of fascism. Such changes are far from unknown: Aesopic hints were frequently altered to save the authorities’ face. Another example of the use of animals is an amusing commentary on the Bolshevik fear of deviations, ‘U tvaje, bratok, kabyły’ (In your mare, brother...):

У твае, браток, кабылы
Заўважаюцца ўхілы:
Хвост направа, соужыць крыва,
А налева зьвісла грыва.

– Што ты, дзядзя, што ты, мілы, –
То-ж ня гора – благадаць:
Каб ня гэтыя ўхілы,
Дык і цэнтры-б ня відаць!14

In the second half of the 1920s Krapiva began to write less and less, although he did produce some witty epigrams, like the transformation of a well-known Soviet maxim into ‘pićcio vyznačaje śviadomaść’ or ‘bićcio vyznačaje śviadomaść’ (drinking / beating determines consciousness).

Turning to the poetry of Duboŭka, we encounter some of Aesopic language’s most characteristic devices, such as substitution of place or time. An early poem, ‘Tam dzie kiparysy’ (There where the cypresses, 1924), for instance, was given what Duboŭka himself used to refer to as ‘a Crimean wrapping’. The narrative poem ‘Branisłava’ (1929) (part of which had been originally published under the title ‘Tam, dzie vaziory’ [There where the lakes are, 1925]) was set in the middle ages, but it is not difficult to see in the portrayal of the Jesuits from Rome Soviet agents. Duboŭka took the precaution of appending to this poem a long preface in which he asserted the historical accuracy of his material; this was manifestly in order to distract the censors from his main aim of showing the plight of contemporary Belarus. The contemporary resonance of the poem, however, emerges quite clearly through the words of the its eponymous heroine:

Вы нашу радасьць адабралі
замуравалі ў камні,
вы шчасьце наша ў гразь стапталі,
ператварылі ў ночы дні...
Замест вясёлае бяседы
у хатах бедных – слёзы, стогн,
сусед не ходзіць да суседа.
За ўсё за гэта вам праклён...
За ўсе крывавыя банкеты,
за зьдзірствы з бедных і сірот –
цераз абшары ўсяго сьвету
вас праклінае мой народ!15

As Adamovich aptly observed, one line, ‘sused ne xodz+c; da suseda< (neighbour does not visit neighbour), is sufficient to strip off the historical reclothing to reveal the intended bleak message.16 Another interesting poem which uses the past to comment on the present is Duboŭka’s ‘Hrachi čurbatyja’ (Tufted sins) from the Tryścio (Reed) cycle of 1925. The censors, however, were not always deceived, and there may be seen a noticeable increase in their understanding of the politically subversive possibilities of Aesopic language throughout the 1920s. The subtext of Pušča’s ‘Sady viatroŭ’ (Gardens of the winds, 1930), for example, was easily spotted by the communist critic N. Kabakoŭ.17 Earlier, Duboŭka’s collection Nala, had been rejected by the Belarusian State Publishing House in Miensk as ideologically suspect, but the author managed to publish it in Moscow in 1927. It was the last collection of Duboŭka’s poems to appear in print.

Ambiguity was one of the censor’s particular bugbears.18 A bold example of this device is to be found in Duboŭka’s ostensibly loyal poem marking the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, ‘Jakoje ščaście spatykać uschod: Da X Kastryčnika’ (What happiness to greet the sunrise: On the tenth anniversary of October, 1927). In it Duboŭka, by highlighting the sunrise, gives the second line a potentially subversive meaning:

Якое шчасьце спатыкаць усход,
якое шчасьце бачыць сонца захад!19

A still bolder example of Duboŭka’s use of ambiguity is to be found in his poem ‘Kalininščyna’:

Тэю-ж мовай – з якой зьгіналі на калені
і якой душылі, сьціскалі –
загаварыў вялікі Ленін,
і загаварыў таварыш Сталін.20

As with all skilful use of literary ambiguity, the censors were faced with an invidious choice: either to take the poem literally, or to assume an implied link between the Soviet leadership and earlier tyrannies.

Related to ambiguity is allegory, a device at which Duboŭka showed great skill and which, as he points out in his poem ‘Šturmujcie budučyni avanposty’ (Storm the outposts of the future, written 1929 but unpublished), was not popular with the Bolsheviks, in this poem represented by the devil who states his position clearly:

Калі ласка, без намёкаў –
Ня люблю я алегорый...21

The poem shows very clearly Duboŭka’s fears about the collectivization of agriculture, represented here by an express train from Vor+a to Uniecha on which the conductor is trying to persuade a reluctant peasant of the advantages of joining a collective, with, as a hostile critic subsequently observed, the peasant being shown in far the best light.22 The other main theme of this most unusual poem, which combined folk poetry and translations of foreign poets with original verse, was the suppression and deadening of Belarusian culture, represented by a violin which is stolen and irreparably damaged.23 Additionally, Duboŭka allows himself some highly unflattering Aesopic pen portraits of several of the more venal Belarusian literary figures of the time. One of his more touching appeals is to Byron, perhaps his favourite poet:

Лорд Байран! Каб ведалі вы
Пра нашай краіны нядолю,
Здратованыя паплавы
І ўкорань стаптанае поле –
Вы, пэўна, пайшлі-б бараніць
Яе, а ня грэцкія міты...
Ды ўрвалася прошласьці ніць.
І мы ланцугамі спавіты...24

Returning to less direct, more Aesopic, means of criticizing the status quo, Duboŭka made considerable use of ‘reclothing’ in his Credo collection (1926) and, as has been mentioned, in the poem ‘Tam, dzie kiparysy’. Another frequently used device, particularly popular with prose writers but also used by Duboŭka in some of his poems, such as ‘I purpurovych vietraziaŭ uźvivy’ (And the ripples of the purple sails, 1929) and ‘šturmujcie budučyni avanposty’, was to provide what was known at the time as a ‘rostrum’ for non-kosher ideas put forward by fictional characters, often with some kind of explanatory ‘insurance’ to protect the author. In these poems, however, Duboŭka demonstrated that his insurance was not genuine by presenting the official point of view in deliberately prosaic form. After his exile Duboŭka wrote in a relatively orthodox way, but in the 1920s he provided one of the main voices of disquiet and opposition to official policies at a time of catastrophic decline in all aspects of Belarusian national life.25

Duboŭka’s cycle ‘Kruhi’ (Circles, 1925-26), ostensibly a very critical work, drawing strong contrasts between past and present, and East and West, evaded strong critical censure partly because it was written at an intellectual level inaccessible to most of the critics, but partly also because their attention was distracted by some very provocative verses of Jazep Pušča which were being published in the same issue of Uzvyšša (1927, no. 5). None the less, Duboŭka became an almost automatic target of criticism, a phenomenon on which he comments wryly in the first footnote to an extraordinary poem, ‘Krychu vosieni i źmiećka klanovych listoŭ (Vieršy z zaŭvahami)’ (A little of autumn and a handful of maple leaves [Verses with notes], 1929) where a cynical critic is portrayed as having already made a noose for the poet without reading his latest work:

Нядаўна крытык у мяне пытаў:
– А што вы пішаце цяпер, Дубоўка?
Даўно я вашых вершаў ня чытаў,
вію для іх крытычную вяроўку.26

There are many links to be found between Duboŭka and Pušča: in their friendship and common concerns, in comparable themes and characters,27 and, most certainly, in their use of Aesopic language. The poems whose publication coincided with that of ‘Kruhi’ in 1927 were Pušča’s ‘Asiećnija pieśni’ (Autumn songs) and ‘Listy da sabaki’ (Letters to a dog). In the first of these cycles Pušča, not for the first or last time, makes comparisons between the relative prosperity of Leningrad and the impoverished state of his own country. His plea that the outside world pay attention to the plight of Belarus, enslaved, as in centuries past, echoes his earlier call in a poem written for the intended visit of a notable Bengali poet, ‘Rabindratu Tagoru’ (To Rabindranath Tagore, 1926) where he spoke of the ‘kvetki kryvi’ (flowers of blood) that had sprung up in Belarus.28 The second poem refers to the crucifixion of his country, and in the third the death of an allegorically depicted October is treated with notable disrespect.

The other cycle, ‘Listy da sabaki’, is one of Pušča’s most celebrated and interesting works. As its title implies, it belongs to the tradition of linking animals and humans that goes back to Aesop’s fables, and was widely used by such subsequent fabulists as Lafontaine, Krylov and Krapiva. Animal imagery was also particularly popular amongst those like Duboŭka and Pušča who resisted the regime, and, indeed, sometimes its supporters too. In the late 1920s Duboŭka wrote satirically about the National Communist Ciška Hartny as a hare who after being fattened up by his masters then had his paws slapped for not running in a straight line.29 Another animal associated with Belarus, zubr (bison), was used with great pathos in Pušča’s ‘Pieśnia okupacyi (1918)’ (Song of the occupation [1918], 1928), when he writes of ‘abłava vilhielmcaŭ na mirnych zubroŭ’ (a raid of Wilhelm’s men on the peaceful bisons), emphasizing the poem’s Aesopic ambiguity by the use of the word vilhielmcy which could refer either to the Germans or to the leading communist official Vilhielm Knorin. Other aspects of ‘Pieśnia okupacyi (1918)’ will be considered later.

Leaving aside Orwell’s Animal Farm, in literature dogs occupy a special place in the animal hierarchy.30 Indeed, they came to be closely associated with Pušča himself as a result of his important poem, ‘Listy da sabaki’. This work contains much Aesopic writing, being ostensibly written from the ‘noisy capital’ (which subsequently turns out to be Leningrad) to his best friend, a Belarusian dog, Jack (clearly meant to represent the nationalists). It is essentially a call for honesty and vigilance in the face of venality and oppression (‘Нашто ж мне падхалімам быць, крывіцца / І ў хмары ўрэзвавцца чырвоным буслам?’),31 and Pušča’s advice to the dog requires little interpretation: it is no use inviting him to visit the capital; life at home is better for a true Belarusian:

Адзет не будзеш ты ў парадны кіцель,
Не будзеш мець заслугі – медаля
збегнуцца і абступяць цябе гіцлі,
І будзе шмат іх: дзе ні стань, ні глянь.

Жыві, жыві, знаць, дома лепей
Услухвайся ў таемны шум і шэпт,
Чужыя людзі ходзяць каля склепа.
Пільнуй! Цябе цалуе твой Язэп.32

The talk of alien people and the need to stand guard at the end of the third and last letter is, in fact, milder than the conclusion of the first of them, where the poet pines for visits from his fellow- countrymen, although he understands why they are impossible, ending his lament with a clear indication of the main source of Belarus’s problems:

І слухаю, ці ў дзьверы хто не дрогне.

Ніхто, ніхто! Зацяты ланцугамі...
Хтось рукі заламаў у далях сініх.
Вартуй, мой дружа, родны ганак, –
Пішу аб гэтым я табе з Расіі.33

Jack’s reply, ‘List ad sabaki’ (Letter from a dog, 1927), begins conventionally with apologies for not replying earlier, but is, in fact, as outspoken as his correspondent’s. Jack has broken free from his chain and run away, but says his son will reply, although he is constantly on the lookout, also longing for a visit from the poet whom, as the last stanza makes clear, he is sure remains unfettered:

Знаю, знаю, ты жывы,
Цябе ніхто не запражэ...
Будзь жа, будзь здароў, жыві;
Цябе цалуе моцна Жэк.34

The theme of dogs continued in Pušča’s ‘Hrachi mae dušy’ (Sins of my soul, 1928) where he declares his wish to remain a poet for his native Belarus, despite his association with dogs (‘Паэтам хоць і стаў сабачым’).35 In the fourth part of ‘śniežanskaja śviežaść’ (December freshness, 1929) an address to the/a dog ends with their departure for supper, in order to gnaw a bone together (‘Разам костку абгрызём’).36 Pušča’s bold use of Aesopic language in his ‘Listy da sabaki’ and related poems made him a major target for attacks by communist critics up until and, indeed, after his arrest in 1930.

Pušča’s ‘Pieśnia okupacyi (1918)’ has already been mentioned for its allegorical content and, particularly, the ambiguity of its historical setting. Its original title had been ‘Cień Konsuła’ (The shadow of the Consul) but the editor of Uzvyšša, Adam Babareka, had changed it to remove the suspicion of a hint at the title of Andrej Aleksandrovič’s scurrilous defamatory poem, ‘Cieni na soncy’ (Shadows on the sun, 1928-29) which had begun to appear at that time. In Pušča’s work the significance of calling the supposed Germans ‘Wilhelm’s men’ was reinforced by the clear association of the initials ‘C. K.’ with those of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the BSSR. Many other details in the poem pointed clearly to 1928 rather than 1918: amongst them may be mentioned the description of the welcome accorded by Belarusians to the occupying forces (portrayed in the poem as cold and hostile, although the real Germans had in fact been warmly welcomed in 1918), the nature of the Consul’s house in Miensk (regularly avoided by the local population) which may be easily recognized as the Central Committee building on Karl Marx street (‘Адведзен для Консула быў асабняк / На вуліцы ціхай, хоць самай цэнтральнай’),37 the picture of enforced servility and the repression of independent thought (‘-Вядома, мы тут акупанты і ўсё / Тут кожны павінен прад намі карыцца’),38 and, more subliminally, the very name of the Consul, Otero, which was intended by the poet to evoke the association of ‘O teror!’ (‘Oh terror!’). There are many more examples of Pušča’s mastery at Aesopic reclothing in ‘Pieśnia okupacyi (1918) which is at least as provocative as ‘Listy da sabaki’, although perhaps not so obvious to the official critics whose job it was to decipher such works and repress them.

Pušča’s last poem in print was ‘Kryvavy płakat’ (The bloody poster, 1930) which, although ostensibly about the liberation of Belarus from the Poles, in fact depicts the Bolshevik terror of the 1920s. By the time it appeared, however, things had gone too far for the outspoken poet’s words to have the effect they would have had earlier.

As has been mentioned, Pušča, like Duboŭka, was rehabilitated in the post-Stalin period, and it is interesting that, although the poem that marked the beginning of this process for Pušča was a sonnet addressed to someone he may have regarded as a fellow-rebel and martyr, ‘Adamu Mićkieviču’ (To Adam Mickiewicz, 1956), Pušča had always associated the sonnet form with prisons. Could it be that this most ironic of poets chose to mark his rehabilitation ambiguously?

At a time of transition and intense disillusion in Belarusian history, literature, as always, played a part in protest and resistance to tyranny and national subjugation. In this literary process which drew in a wide variety of poets and writers from Kupała and Kołas to Uładzimier Žyłka and Todar Klaštorny, a central role was played by Uładzimier Duboŭka and Jazep Pušča, two outstanding poets, who in their subtly Aesopic writing provide a vivid picture of the cultural and political struggles of the second half of the 1920s which, for all the time that has elapsed, retain their relevance for today.

Arnold McMillin – born 21 June 1941 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Great Britain. Professor of Russian Literature at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. Recent work includes: Belarusian Literature in the 1950s and 1960s: Release and Renewal (1999) and Reconstructing the Canon: Russian Literature in the 1980s (2000).

1 Use of his own initials became a recurrent feature of Shostakovich’s later work, and in the five-note horn motif in the third movement of his 10th Symphony lies the musical signature of a woman friend, the Azerbaijani pianist and composer Elmira Nazirova. See Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, London, 1994 (hereafter Wilson, Shostakovich), p. 263.
2 Gerard McBurney has noted that the first four notes of the initial march theme in the finale of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony coincide in pitch (and almost in rhythm) with the first four notes (to the words ‘Художник-варвар’ - A barbarian artist) of his 1936 setting of Pushkin’s poem about censorial interference with art, ‘Vozrozhdenie’ (Rebirth, 1819); his Four Pushkin Songs had been written just before the symphony. See Wilson, Shostakovich), p. 127n. It has also been observed that the long quiet stretch in the middle of the same movement is another self-quotation, alluding to the accompaniment to the final quatrain of the same Pushkin setting: ‘Так исчезают заблуждения/С измученной души моей, / И возникают в ней виденья / Первоначальных, чистых дней’ (Thus delusions disappear / From my exhausted soul / And in it arise visions / Of my earliest, pure days). Here and subsequently (unless otherwise indicated) all translations are my own. See Richard Taruskin, Redefining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays, Princeton, NJ, 1997, p. 532.
3 Another prominent example of the roman ŕ clef in Belarusian literature of the 1920s was the second novel of Micha˙ Zarecki (1901-37), Kryvičy (The Kryvians), the first and only published part of which came out in 1929. In it he features, in disguise, the nationalist leader Vacłaŭ Łastoŭski (1883﷓1938), a person whom the authorities detested. Both the author and his subject were subsequently shot, within a year of each other.
4 Anthony Adamovich, Opposition to Sovietization in Belorussian Literature (1917-1957), Munich, 1958 (hereafter Adamovich, Opposition), p. 90.
5 J. Limanoŭski, ‘Uvaha da mastackaj specyfiki’, Połymia Revolucyi, 1933, no. 5, p. 130.
6 His name, it may be noted, bears an uncommon resemblance to that of the suprematist artist Kazimir Malevich. I am grateful to Juraś Łaŭryk of the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library in London for this suggestion.
7 Ibid.
8 Janka Kupała held a particularly high opinion of Duboŭka: when they first met, he declared, ‘I am only Derzhavin. You are Pushkin’. See Adamovich, Opposition, p. 84. For an affectionate and informative memoir of Pušča and study of his work see Hłybinny 1979.
9 Dudar’s poem itself soon found official disfavour, since he had made the ideological mistake of comparing Duboŭka and Pušča to the ‘bourgeois’ Russian poets Igor´ Severianin and Aleksandr Vertinskii, as a result of which his poem found itself blacklisted. Janka Limanoŭski was commissioned to write a poem with exactly the same title as Dudar’s but showing the influence of the East (namely Russia) to be entirely positive. The use of literature to defuse other literature is far from unique to Belarus, and has, in fact, a long and inglorious history. For example, such devices were extensively used in Brezhnev’s time, notably to try to limit the perceived damage to the Soviet state by the writing of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. For a witty account of this phenomenon see Michael A. Nicholson, ‘Soviet Antidotes to Solzhenitsyn’s Avgust chetyrnadtsatogo’, in Arnold McMillin (ed.), Aspects of Modern Russian and Czech Literature, Columbus, OH, 1989, pp. 159-78.
10 ‘Bengal, / Bengal... / You have broken the chains, / But of your sister, Bengal, / The chain of longing still squeezed hearts. // Bengal, / Bengal... / Do not hasten to the red „paradise”, / Where are torments, Bengal, / And Belarus, your sister’: Ju. Harbićski (ed.).
11 ‘There is no difference, Bengal, / Whether you are suppressed by a khan or a commissar’: Ibid. An interesting updated version of this poem, using some of the same stanzas, including those quoted here, was published by the émigré poet Micha˙ Kavyl (b. 1915): Biełaruskaja dumka, 13-14, 1971-72, p. 25.
12 An interesting Russian reversal of this practice was the writer and ballad singer Bulat Okudzhava’s ‘Pesnia „amerikanskogo” soldata’ (Song of an ‘American’ soldier, 1961) in which the soldier’s nationality was added, contrary to the author’s intention, by the authorities. See Gerald Stanton Smith, Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet ‘Mass Song’, Bloomington, IN, 1984, p. 127.
13 A good example of this phenomenon is Pušča’s poem about the foreign oppression of Belarus, dated 29 May 1926, the official date of the founding of Uzvyšša, which he entitled ‘Z cykła „Zachodniaja Biełaruś”’ (From a cycle ‘Western Belarus’).
14 ‘In your mare, brother, / Can be seen deviations: / The tail’s to the right, it works askew, / And the mane hangs to the left. // What is it, uncle, dear friend, / It is not grief but a blessing: / Were it not for these deviations, / Then you wouldn’t be able to see the centre’: Adamovich, Opposition, p. 195. This poem was never published, and in the appendix to his book Adamovich, himself a participant in the events of the 1920s and a leading expert on Belarusian dissident literature, quotes it from memory. That another prominent writer, Maksim Łužanin (b. 1909), was denounced to the authorities for reading it aloud shows the transparency of Krapiva’s message.
15 ‘You have taken away our joy / and buried it in stone walls, / you have trampled our happiness in the dirt, / and turned days into nights. / Instead of merry conversations / in our poor huts there are tears and wailing, / neighbour does not visit neighbour. / For all this I curse you... // For all the bloody banquets, / for the mockery of the poor and orphans - / through all the wide spaces of the entire world / my people curses you!’: Uładzimir Duboŭka, Vybranyja tvory ŭ dvuch tamach, Miensk, 1965 (hereafter Duboŭka, Vybranyja tvory), II, pp. 56-57. Here, as elsewhere, the Cyrillic orthography is modified to correspond to that used in the 1920s (known as the Taraškievič system) and now being reinstated by nationally conscious writers in contemporary Belarus.
16 Adamovich, Opposition, p. 132. Incidentally, by the time of the poem’s republication in 1965 the editors felt no need for Duboŭka’s introduction. This kind of Aesopic masking was no longer a part of the post-Stalin literary process, and readers of historical poems were far less alert to contemporary allusions.
17 See ‘Za klasavuju vyraznaść i čotkaść našaj litaratury’, Maładniak, 1930, no. 4, p. 95.
18 Obscurity could be dangerous, as in the case of Ničypar Čarnuševič (1900-76), a member of no literary grouping, whose long poem ‘Dziva’ (The marvel, 1927), full of allegories, simply bemused the critics, but no doubt contributed to his arrest in 1930.
19 ‘What happiness to greet the sunrise, / what happiness to see the sunset’: Duboŭka, Vybranyja tvory, I, p. 146.
20 ‘In the same language with which men had been forced to their knees / with which they had been suppressed, crushed - / great Lenin spoke, / and comrade Stalin speaks’: Uładzimier Duboŭka, Credo, Miensk, 1926, p. 40.
21 ‘No hints, please - / I don’t like allegories’: Quoted from Adamovich, Opposition, p. 196.
22 The fact that the poem was withdrawn from publication at proof stage but widely circulated in manuscript did not prevent the communist critic Orest Kanakocin from quoting it extensively: O. Kanakocin, Litaratura - zbroja klasavaj baraćby, Miensk, 1931, pp. 72-73.
23 This is a clear allusion to Kołas’s great epic poem Symon-muzyka (1911-25).
24 ‘Lord Byron! If you would know / About the misfortune of our land, / Our ruined flood meadows / And fields trampled to the roots - / You, surely, would have gone to defend / Her, and not Greek myths... / But the thread of the past is broken, / And we are entwined in chains’: Quoted from Adamovich, Opposition, p. 197.
25 Duboŭka’s celebrated and bitter ‘Himn paŭstancaŭ’ was published in Ranica, 10 January 1942, no. 1 (65).
26 ‘Recently a critic asked me: / - And what are you writing now, Duboŭka? / I haven’t read your poems for a long time, / I am weaving a critical rope for them’: Uzvyšša, 1929, no. 7, p. 3.
27 In Pušča’s poem ‘Sady viatroŭ’, for instance, the poet Hrymicki uses the image of sailing a stormy sea, one of many thematic links between this work and Duboŭka’s ‘I purpurovych vietraziaŭ uźvivy’; links may also be seen between Miarocha in ‘Sady viatroŭ’ and the grotesque Don Puza in Duboŭka’s ‘Šturmujcie budučyni avanposty’.
28 These were the original words: see Adamovich, Opposition, p. 94. In Jazep Pušča, Zbor tvoraŭ u dvuch tamach, Miensk, 1993 (hereafter Pušča, Zbor tvoraŭ), I, p. 85 the phrase is ‘kvetki krasy’ (flowers of beauty). The notes to this edition, however, do mention a stanza, subsequently ‘omitted’, which referred to ‘foreigners who have sought to deprive my people of glory / And to stain their hearts with bloody wounds’: Ibid., p. 350.
29 Uładzimier Duboŭka, ‘Uračystaja data’, Uzvyšša, 1928, no. 6, p. 22.
30 There are many illustrations of this in Russian literature from Turgenev to Soviet times. For instance, one of the greatest works of underground literature, which circulated for many years in samizdat, was Georgii Vladimov’s tale of a prison camp guard dog, Vernyi Ruslan, Frankfurt am Main, 1975. See Svetlana Geisser-Schnittman, ‘Glazami sobaki (O povesti Georgiia Vladimova „Vernyi Ruslan”)’, Schweizerische Beiträge zum XI. Internationalen Slavistenkongress in Bratislava, September 1993, ed. Jan Peter Locher, Bern, 1994, pp. 41-56.
31 ‘Why should I be a toady, crooked / And cut into the clouds like a red stork’: Pušča, Zbor tvoraŭ, I, p. 113.
32 ‘You would not be dressed in parade uniform. / You would not have honours and medals / Dog catchers would come from all sides and surround you, / and there would be many of them: wherever you were, wherever you looked. // Live, live at home; you know it’s better there / Listen closely to the mysterious sound and whispering, / Alien people are walking near the cellar. / Stand guard! Your Jazep kisses you.’: Ibid., pp. 116-17.
33 ‘And I listen to see if anyone is trembling by the door. // No-one, no-one! Suppressed by chains... / Someone is ringing their hands in the blue distance. / guard, my friend, your native porch, - / I am writing to you of this from Russia.’: Ibid., p. 113.
34 ‘I know, know, you are alive, / No-one will harness you... / Remain healthy and live; / With strong kisses from Jack.: Ibid., p. 118.
35 ‘Although I have become a canine poet’: Ibid., p. 128.
36 Uzvyšša, 1929, no. 1, p. 24.
37 ‘A detached house was set aside for the Consul / On a quiet street, although right in the centre.’: Uzvyšša, 1928, no. 2 (8), p. 72
38 ‘ - Of course, we are occupiers, that’s all... / And everyone must submit to us’: Ibid., p. 73.