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 Leon
Tarasewicz: The province is not to blame!
Witold Bereś: Sometimes you reminisce how, in the 80s, when you traveled with your friends in the express train ‘Pogoń’ from Białystok to Warsaw, and talked in Belarusian, the compartment got empty at one moment. Has the attitude of Poles toward Belarusian changed in the Bialystok region recently?
Leon Tarasewicz: Frankly speaking, this situation happened only once. It was 1984 and I was just finishing my studies. And the lady who remained in the compartment said that we do not behave in a cultural way. So I asked her if we started talking in English would this be cultural enough for her. That situation resulted from isolation of Poland, it was an effect of the communist propaganda, and, finally, of inferiority complex spread in Białystok. A conversation in Belarusian in public place was a kind of manifestation. Today I see in Białystok young people who have already traveled in the world, they speak three languages and nobody gets particularly astonished at that. But it also concerns an elite, a relatively small group.
Bereś: 1989 came and Belarusians got involved in all the changes, too. The writer Sokrat Janowicz, and you… It seemed that nobody would be teaching nobody, but already then the Białystok KIK [Catholic Intelligentsia Club] blocked the Belarusian candidate for the ‘Solidarity’ list. Later AWS came into power and in the Bialystok region the Orthodox people were removed from managerial posts. Józef Mozolewski commented at that time: “We wish Poles abroad that they got as much from their authorities as the Polish government offers to the Belarusian population here”. Like in that old joke: “And they beat up Blacks at your country!” Is this the specificity of the Bialystok region, or are things wrong in the Polish state?
Tarasewicz: Definitely it look bad here, in the Białystok region. And 1989 is an important date, a symbol, but, as regards Polish intelligentsia, this date might as well not exist at all. As if somebody assumed that this country after 1989 will not develop intellectually. Money was limited for science, arts and culture. Economy moved a bit, but nobody noticed that a business producing e.g. cars has to invest in new technologies and patents. Nobody noticed and the FSO got finished. And if we don’t like something in Poland today, it is because we did not have sufficient human resources to carry out changes after 1989. There wasn’t enough intelligentsia. And nobody wanted to invest in this social group.
Bereś: Did it look any differently among the Belarusians?
Tarasewicz: No, why? The Belarusian community in the Białystok region is affected by the same processes. If in Poland the SLD dominates, then we have a parallel organization called the Belarusian Social and Cultural Organization. You have Leszek Miller, we have Jan Syczewski; You had the Democratic Union, and we had Belarusian Democratic Union. You have Adam Michnik and Jacek Kuroń, and we have Sokrat Janowicz. Among us, the same as among you, the Belarusian activists started thinking about and securing positions, influences, political relations, money…
Bereś: But the situation of Belarusians is worse in the sense that they had problems with state administration. This is for this reason that you refused to accept the city mayor’s award.
Tarasewicz: I did not accept it then I wouldn’t today. The local newspaper, Kurier Poranny, did not consider it worthwhile to print at least my symbolical reservation about the text which offensively represented the Festival of Young Belarusian Culture “Basowiszcza”. But it is not only this. I just don’t want to function as a cover-up for the atmosphere of distrust toward Belarusians and the Orthodox which the authorities are trying to build up in this region. And since I can remember, the local authorities have been trying to do all to restore the ND atmosphere here.
The Belarusian language has not been introduced to the schools of the Białystok region as an equal language, not to mention history of Belarus. But it was Belarus which fought Moscow much more than the Poles. In the Białystok public radio you can listen to Belarusian songs only in the ethnic program, but never between songs in English and Italian. Paranoid situations occur – an editor having a folk music program played Belarusian music and was called by his superior, because Belarusian music has a separate slot!
Bereś: Don’t we exaggerate a bit? Do you think that nationalist atmosphere is indeed that strong?
Tarasewicz: Not long ago I went to a Białystok tailor to have my trousers fitted. It turned out he came from vicinity of Jedwabne. And for 20 minutes I had to listen to such a monologue that my only dream was to leave as soon as possible. I understood that there are still people who would allow another Jedwabne to happen. Some are always ready to admit that Jews are to blame for whatever, and others, especially here, in the Białystok region, that this is due to Belarusians, those morons.
It is as in the book by Jan Stanisław Bystroń from 1934, “About supersitions and prejudice” – it’s all black behind the hill, and there in Mazowsze children are born covered in hair and have three eyes each.
Bereś: Do you think that political elites are to blame in this respect, too?
Tarasewicz: Of course, they bear major responsibility for it. We can say today that it was the fault of the Democratic Union that they did not extend a welcoming hand to those Belarusians who wanted to be their partners. “Solidarnosc chocza mieć panskuju Polszczu” – as my mother used to say. Hence the failure of Solidarity in these areas after 1989. When people here were offered only Piłsudski and the Catholic Church, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz turned out to be the only alternative. It was the only “pan” who came and shook hands with them.
Could art possibly work for promoting tolerance and multiculturalism?
It could. But how, if the state revoked any responsibility for culture and dumped it on the shoulders of local authorities? And it is even worse in territories where old phobias are still looming large (the Opole, Białystok, Przemyśl regions. There the atmosphere can be getting close to nationalist hysteria.
And let’s remember what took place in the Warsaw Zachęta with Anda Rottenberg, and how Dorota Nieznalska’s exhibition was attacked in Gdansk. What’s is happening today in Białystok? Katarzyna Korzeniewska’s works toured the whole of Europe, only here is she charged with pornography! Frequently, the state apparatus defends Catholicism allegedly threatened by art. But so it happens that it does not defend the rights of even one non-believer, that it does not prosecute MPs who destroy an object of art because they claim it is anti-Pope, or an actor who comes the national gallery and smashes art with a saber.
People, who during the Solidarity revolution waved flags with ‘liberty’ written on them, including freedom of art today – while we, Belarusians, wanted to have the right for at least normal broadcasting of our songs on the public radio and not within the time meant for Belarusian cultural ghetto – became people hating art. They became censors!
To all instances of different thinking they have just one answer: it is not in accordance with Christian values. And it would seem that one cannot impose one’s values on all the others, because this is precisely in opposition to Christian values. That it would much more Christian to develop a wise catechization… In the meantime the teachers of religion are busy delineating the frames which would contain the art.
Bereś: Can this be in any way changed?
Tarasewicz: My whole life is an example of changes. Just the fact that as early as in 1990 the Belarusians were able to establish the local government in Gródek, where in 20 seats we held 17 representatives, and this had an immediate effect in the city’s cultural development. Later just from the grassroots level, without any support from the central administration, we created a bilingual newspaper which got lots of awards and it was massively quote even abroad.
Bereś: Maybe we should convince the Polish state that it can benefit from multiculturalism?
Tarasewicz: It’s too late now. The Polish state has already lost the chance. The authorities are still blocking many things – it is enough to mention Agnieszka Arnold’s film about “Bury”, the commander of the NSZ [National Armed Forces] guerilla unit, who right after the war murdered Belarusians and burned villages in the Białystok region. But we have to admit honestly that while you and other Poles are ashamed by views held by a part of the Polish society, I also have to be ashamed by things occurring in the Belarusian community. And the activity of Syczewski from SLD, who’s a keen admirer of Lukaszenka, it not the only example here.
But it is too late also for one more reason – we are about to enter the EU. And the borders do not matter that much any longer. We can organize festival of Belarusian folk culture, but anyway the best Belarusian folk bands perform in the Netherlands or in Germany. I had an exhibition recently in Reims, now in Milan. In just a moment the Polish and Belarusian culture will share the same situation. The irony lies in the fact that European cultural policy is focused on regionalism, and Belarusians might as well benefit from this tendency.
The Union makes us aware of one more thing: we can build our culture through the provinces. Well, basing on the center, but still within the province. But do I have here in Waliły seek support in Warsaw? Recently in the ZOO Railway Station in Berlin I remembered a situation from years before. There was a time when I used to get off the train in Warsaw Central, just like I do now in Berlin. I wanted to see exhibitions, see people. And it was so elevating! Today I get off in Berlin and want to see exhibitions I cannot see in Warsaw. Slowly we are facing a situation that we have a capital city in the center of the country which is not at all an intellectual center.
In Europe nothing will be operated from the center, as it still is frequently here. The future belongs to such organizations as Pogranicze – the Borderland Foundation. In small Sejny four people can do an amazing thing together! Or Andrzej Stasiuk for that matter, who lives in Czarne and takes part in cultural life more intensively than many people in large urban centers.
Not mentioning the fact that renting an apartment is cheaper today in Berlin than in Warsaw.
Moreover, the first time that the tar road was being made from Białystok to Bobrowniki on the border, through my home town Waliły, was just now, for the EU money.
Bereś: But as of now not much liveliness can be observed in the provinces.
Tarasewicz: The province is not to blame! It will be the same in a small town in the Białystok region as in small San Antonio in Argentine, where I was in 1990. National traits do not determine anything, rather cultural isolation caused by economic conditions. In the Białystok region, where I was raised, no Bialorusian elite remained. When I was a little boy I always wondered why every intellectual is a Pole.
Many years later I was translating “Memories of Gródek Jews” and it turned out that in this town before the war they studied Kant and Schopenhauer. That there was an Orthodox church in Gródek since 1498, five synagogues were built in time, and a Catholic church was built only in 1937. So, when I am reading today about Maciej Stryjkowski, a historian and a graphic, who was invited in the second half of 16th c. to Choroszcza to the land of Nowogródek voyvode Aleksander Chodkiewicz and who, on the basis of Belarusian chronicles from the Gródek treasury wrote the “Polish Chronicle”, then I feel my heart beat faster. It turns out, after all, that Ruthenian archives are indispensable for the history of Poland and Lithuania!
And I am still building up new pieces to my history. Not long ago I found an uncle in Petersburg, a rector of the Academy of Economy who, in 1942 left for Russia. And it is only today that we are able to complete our fragmented but shared history. Maybe a regular generation of Belarusian intelligentsia will have a chance to emerge at last, and they will be as important as Bronisław Taraszkiewicz before the war. [ed.: A linguist, in 1918 published the first handbook of Belarusian grammar, later an MP in the Parliament of II Republic, next an activist of the Communist Party of Western Belarus, in 1928 sentenced to 12 year imprisonment; in 1933 he left for USSR in effect of prisoners exchange. In 1937 arrested and shot in USSR]
Imprisoned in Poland he translated, from memory, the Iliad and Pan Tadeusz into Belarusian.
Bereś: Do you believe that soon there won’t be a question who is a Belarusian and who is a Pole, but to what degree one is a European?
Tarasewicz: It is so already. When I am listening to Radio Maryja warning that Europe will take advantage of us, I start laughing, because so far there are not too many western Europeans coming here. Instead, I can see that emigration is a more probable tendency. After the 80s, when people were leaving, earning money and coming back. But this is nothing unusual. We always try to find a place for ourselves where the conditions are better and some money can be earned.
In the first years of 16th c. Franciszek Skaryna went to study in Padova, where also Jan Kochanowski and Mikołaj Rej would go. And later he turned up in Kraków, in order to print the Bible in Belarusian and to attempt revive his homeland in Połock. But nobody wanted him there, and so he remained suspended between the courts of Prague and Denmark.
Today Roman Polański makes important films which are of an immense value to us, but not all of them are shot in Poland. Romek Opałka occupies an important position in art, but lives in France. Krzysio Wodiczko… And so on. We are not impoverished by the fact that they create somewhere else, but by the fact that we do not know how to make use of their art here.
And here I cannot get rid of one doubt: a country which claims to be free would be able to grant permission for a statue commemorating innocent Belarusian wagon drivers murdered by nationalist guerillas in 1946. A country, which is free, would not stubbornly organize festival of patriotic music and borderland culture in territories where other nations live. A country, which is free, does not get annoyed when somebody says ‘Heimat’, and understands that the expression “kresowy” [trans.: pertaining to interwar borderland multinational territories in the east] may hurt many of its citizens of other than Polish nationality, that for Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians it can stand for treating their land as a kind of a colony.
So, how is it with Poland’s freedom?
„Gazeta Wyborcza”, 9-07-2003
Translated by Dorota Kołodziejczyk
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