BELARUS DIGEST

Poland and the Republic of Lithuania today officially celebrate the 600th anniversary of the battle of Grunwald.

On July 15, 1410, the united army of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania have defeated the Order of the Teutonic Knights in the well-known battle.

From 40 Lithuanian units at the battle 28, the overwhelming majority, were from the lands of modern Belarus and only 4 were from the territory of what is now the Republic of Lithuania.

For obvious reasons, the Belarusian president Aliaksandr Lukashenka has not been invited to the celebration. However, several hundred members of Belarusian history clubs have taken part in reconstruction of the battle.

Belarusian TV is this week broadcasting several historical documentaries about the battle. Belarus has today issued postage stamps commemorating the Battle of Grunwald. Interestingly, it is probably the first time since 1995 that the stamps feature Pahonia, the historical coat of arms of Belarus. Pahonia is a version of the emblem of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania that has been replaced by the quasi-Soviet modern state emblem following a controversial referendum.

Polish and foreign heads of state have arrived at Grunwald, in northern Poland, to mark the 600th anniversary of the Polish-Lithuanian victory over the German order of Teutonic knights on July 15, in 1410.

After hearing an address by Polish President-elect Bronisław Komorowski, participants will lay wreaths at the battlefield and later visit the Teutonic Knight’s castle in Malbork.

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The American Comedy star Lisa Kudrow has found her Belarusian roots in NBC’s project Who Do You Think You Are. Her ancestors were Jews from the village Illia, Minsk province of Belarus. Some of her relatives have been killed during the Second World War.

The World War has put an end the Jewish Belarus after 800 thousands Belarusian Jews have been exterminated by Nazis. Every eighth victim of the Holocaust came from Belarus. Many Belarusian Jews have emigrated to the United States since late 19th century.

Lisa Kudrow has traced her family back to Belarus on the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?

The former Friends actress, who is an executive producer on the genealogy programme, has been filming her own appearance, Metro reports.

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On March 25, 1918, the Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, a representative body formed as a result of a nationwide congress in 1917, has adopted its Third Charter declaring independence of Belarus from the Russian Empire.

Formally, from that very moment till modern days Belarus has legally been a sovereign state: first as the Belarusian Democratic Republic (also known as the Belarusian People’s Republic or the Belarusian National Republic), then as the Belarusian Soviet Republic and since 1991 as the Republic of Belarus. The day is actively celebrated by the Belarusian democratic opposition and by the Belarusian diaspora in the West but is ignored by Belarusian officials.

Here the official address by Ivonka Survilla, President of the Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic, the Belarusian government in exile:

Dear fellow Belarusians!

On behalf of the Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic I congratulate you with the great national holiday, Freedom Day. I wish you to spend it with faith and hope for a better future. The Belarusian people will gain freedom and democracy just as it has gained independence.

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On this day 70 years ago, on March 5, 1940, the politburo of the Communist Party of the USSR has passed the decision to kill several thousands officers of the Polish army. The killings are now known as Katyn Massacre, named after the first known place of where the executions have taken place. The Katyn Massacre is a historical episode where the role of Belarus is usually understated or, better said, ignored at all. This has its reasons.

Among the officers of the Polish army killed in Katyn there were many people from West Belarus that was part of the Second Polish Republic before 1939. In particular, one of two generals killed by the Soviets was Bronisław Bohatyrewicz from Hrodna, who had also been a commander of Belarusian national self-defence units in 1918-1919. According to historians’ estimates, about a quarter of the 14.5 thousands people killed in Katyn were Belarusians.

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The council of the Polish city of Kraków has declared Aliaksandr Lukašenka, the President of Belarus, persona non grata in the city. It is a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the Union of Poles in Belarus.

The city council has passed a resolution which appeals to the European Parliament to take all possible effective action against the Belarusian state to protect the rights of persecuted Poles in Belarus.

The conflict around the Union of Poles of Belarus is quite far from what it may look like at the first glance. The specific is that the conflict has no nationalistic background at all.

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Indeed, despite laying in the geographical centre of Europe, Belarus is psychologically, mentally, still at the very outskirts of the continent.

Expansion of the EU has put an Iron Curtain between Belarus and Vilnia (Vilnius), that has been a Belarusian capital for centuries. It has put an border between Poland and the home country of several people known among the world’s most famous Poles – Tadeusz Kościuszko, Adam Mickiewicz, Michał Kleofas Ogiński and others. A border between the modern Republic of Lithuania and the Slavic-speaking eastern part of the hisorical region of Lithuania Propria that also included Navahrudak, Hrodna and Minsk.

Frankly speaking, “disintegrating churches, ruined public buildings, shabby homes and bumpy roads” is not exactly the landscape one would see in Belarus. Clean streets, well-kept towns and good roads is something that impresses tourists from Russia and Ukraine in today’s Belarus. But the problems are exactly the same as described in The Economist’s film review. Centuries-old ties between Belarus and its EU-neighbours Lithuania and Poland have been torn by Belarus staying outside the process of the European integration. One can only hope that Belarus would one day overcome this barrier, so that the EU would have more reasons to be called just Europe.

PLENTY of places have a claim to be Europe’s geographical centre. French geographers calculated in 1989 that it lies on a hill near Purnuškės in Lithuania. Belarusian cartographers think it is near the town that Russians call Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk in Belarusian). In 1887 in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, geographers erected a monument at Dilove, in what is now the Ukrainian province of Transcarpathia, marking what they reckoned was Europe’s real mid-point.

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