A Belarusian woman bought a Stalin-era apartment from Yanka Bryl's daughter and showed how she renovated it PHOTOS

Viktoryia Kliaŭko. Photos here and further: Viktoryia's Threads

Karla Marksa Street, 36 — the most literary house in the country. The building itself is a historical and cultural value. The Stalinist Empire-style house was designed by architect Arkadz Bregman.

The building was commissioned in 1953. One of the first residents was Yanka Maŭr (it was he who initiated the construction of the residential building for the Union of Writers of the BSSR). At various times, Maksim Luzhanin, Vasil Vitka, Piatro Hlebka, Ivan Mielezh, Ivan Shamiakin, Yanka Skryhan, Ivan Navumienka, Nil Hilevich, and many others lived here.

In 1971, Uladzimir Karatkievič moved here. The memorial plaques on this house can be read endlessly.

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The apartment after renovation

Yanka Bryl, by the way, lived on the fifth floor in apartment 23. It was this apartment that Belarusian writer Viktoryia Kliaŭko bought. She showed on Threads how she changed the apartment:

"We bought this 'grandmother's Stalin-era apartment' (let's omit that the grandmother is Natallia Ivanaŭna, Yanka Bryl's daughter) and turned it into a modern literary living room, where for the third year now literary book club meetings and apartment concerts with cultural figures are held."

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This is how Yanka Bryl's apartment looked before renovation

Earlier, Viktoryia said on social media that a lucky chance helped her become the owner of this unique property. At that time (October 2021), she had just finished her first story "Salty Water," where the main character wandered the world in search of lost music.

"My subscriber sent me a link on Viber to a story about a closed sale of a Stalin-era apartment on Marksa Street. By some miracle, I saw this message. And although there were no plans to buy an apartment, my husband and I went to see this Stalin-era apartment and breathe in the spirit of antiquity. We stood in the sunny kitchen on the fifth floor and learned that the apartment was being sold by Yanka Bryl's daughter, that it was a writers' house, and descendants of Belarusian writers lived here. And in this very kitchen, Tank, Krapiva, Karatkievič once stood, just like us."

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Viktoryia says she fell in love with the apartment from the first creak of the parquet and didn't even realize how she became its happy owner: "With the appearance of the apartment, it was as if a light was turned on inside, and it became clear where to go next."

She understood well what a diamond she had acquired and was not going to simply make it a stylish apartment for living or renting out. She wanted this place to be talked about again as a place where the thoughts and dreams of Belarusian writers lived.

Viktoryia turned the apartment renovation into a performance. In 2021, she invited volunteers for a "talaka" (community work) to strip wallpaper together, free the original parquet from under the laminate, listen to "Pesniary," and enjoy homemade cutlets.

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A year later, the writer again gathered a "talaka" — this time to paint the walls and adorn them with quotes from Belarusian classics: "This way we will leave a collective message for descendants, future owners of the apartment. If they decide to renovate, many pleasant wishes will await them — life wisdom expressed by writers and poets and written by us on the walls of the apartment." The former owners of the apartment also visited then.

Now, the apartment hosts meetings of the "MonaLit36" book club and apartment concerts with cultural figures.

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In 2024, Viktoryia Kliaŭko got into an unpleasant situation. Attentive readers noticed many similarities in her novel "Vyraj" to Sviatlana Kurs's (aka Yeva Viezhnaviec) famous book "What Are You Going For, Wolf?".

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Viktoryia Kliaŭko

At that time, Viktoryia wrote in her Telegram channel that she had not read "What Are You Going For, Wolf?", had no intention of copying the plot, and believed that she and Kurs simply addressed the same theme because it is relevant and in the air.

Now, "Vyraj" can be seen in the format of a theatrical reading on the chamber stage of the Kupalaŭski Theater.

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