Seven letters with such declarations of love, but she married a KGB agent

Letter to Zoya Koush, likely written by F. Lyashko. From the archives of the Vilnius Belarusian Museum

When those letters were written to Zoya Koush, she was 15. For her to be able to study at the Belarusian gymnasium, which, like in modern-day Belarus, were few under Polish rule, her family moved to Vilnius in 1925. Her parents bought a house there on Letnyaya Street in Antakalnis. After a childhood full of anxieties, Zoya's youth began, at first glance, absolutely happily.

Zoya was born in 1911 into a well-off family. Her father, Alyaksandr Koush, was a bank employee. Her mother, Lizaveta, came from a family of Hrodna burghers; her maiden name was Suravets. Her father was from a hardworking peasant family: he inherited a considerable plot of land near Vawkavysk. But then the war broke out, and they were evacuated from Lublin to Ryazan, and then to Maikop.

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Lizaveta Suravets (left), Alyaksandr Koush, and possibly little Zoya. Photo Wikimedia Commons

Only in 1921, together with other Belarusian refugees, the Koushes managed to return to their homeland. Influenced by wartime events, her father retrained as a priest, but in Vilnius, he would also work concurrently in his first profession as an accountant.

Zoya Koushanka (as girls were traditionally called: daughter of Koush means Koushanka; Aloiza from Pashkeviches means Pashkevichanka…) successfully passed the entrance exams to the Vilnius Belarusian Gymnasium. Her family was considered among the "best Belarusian families." 1926 was a moment when one could breathe after wars, after dangerous wanderings through the Russian hinterlands, after changes in systems and authorities. There was work, there was life, the sun shone in the courtyards near the Basilian Walls.

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This building on Didzioji Street 30 housed the dormitory of the Vilnius Belarusian Gymnasium

However, the Koush family (I mean personally, not publicly) could only be called absolutely happy at first glance, but more on that later.

The following year, 1927, would be somewhat similar to Belarus's 2021 for many modern families, but in a milder form.

Belarusian identity was a conscious choice for Koush-father, the work of his soul.

In 1927, due to the ban on the activity of the Belarusian Peasants' and Workers' Hramada, Father Alyaksandr Koush was arrested by Polish authorities, but he was acquitted in 1928. Upon returning to Vilnius, he continued to engage in public and church activities. He conducted services for Belarusian gymnasium students in St. Paraskeva Church — the oldest Orthodox sanctuary in Vilnius, founded in the 14th century under Algirdas (though rebuilt beyond recognition under Muravyov). Thanks to the priest's efforts, the church was restored and for several years became virtually the only place where Belarusian-language services and sermons could be heard.

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Celebration of the anniversary of the proclamation of the Belarusian People's Republic in the Vilnius Belarusian Gymnasium, 1935. Photo Wikimedia Commons

Against this backdrop, young men and women lived as all young people do: they sought love. Whether a girl paid attention to a young man depended on how the letter was written, so they tried hard, and those messages were sometimes a whole drama.

The selective Zoya was not in a hurry to marry. In 1939, when World War II broke out, she was 28 years old. By those times, this was considered very old for a girl. And then it was no longer a time for weddings. The Soviets occupied Vilnius, and people, perhaps even those young men who sought her heart, began to disappear without a trace.

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Zoya Koush, 1930s. Fragment from a Wikimedia Commons photo

Zoya's father, Alyaksandr Koush, remained free but was forced to stop serving in the church. In 1941, the Germans arrived, and Koush went to Minsk to restore church life: before 1941 only two active churches remained in all of Eastern Belarus, almost all priests had been shot by the Soviets. Koush was assigned to Pleshchanitsy. There he was shot – but this time by the Gestapo for saving Jews. He was 59 years old at the time. He died almost at the same time as Khatyn burned down. From Pleshchanitsy to Khatyn is about 25 kilometers by road and even less if going directly.

And so: her father is shot by the Gestapo, while his children, Zoya, 32 years old at the time, and Stanislau, 27 (also a future priest), remain to work for German structures. Stas became the chairman of Kletsk district, and Zoya worked as a legal adviser in the Belarusian National Committee in Vilnius.

Perhaps the key to understanding such conformism lies in the family atmosphere? Siarhei Shupa, who lodged with Koushanka in the 1990s, recounts that Zoya's mother – a Hrodna burgher – never forgave herself for the shameful misalliance with the peasant-born Alyaksandr throughout her life. In the late 1930s, she re-registered the house in her name and drove Father Alyaksandr out of the house. He spent his last Vilnius years on Vialikaya Street, near St. Nicholas Church. She also drove her son Sviataslau out of the house because he married a priest's daughter – and he was forced to rent a room from the Padahyel family, also on Letnyaya Street, seven houses away from the "parental" home. Did Zoya inherit her character from such a proud mother?

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Group photo in the garden: Zoya Koush and her friend with their parents. Photo Wikimedia Commons

In her memoirs, Zoya Koush justified her choice by saying that in that position she did what she could – she wrote petitions to the Nazis, sought the release of people from dungeons, and even managed to clear partisans.

In 1944, Zoya retreated with the Germans – the very Germans who had shot her father. But where was she to go? For some time, she worked as a secretary for Radaslau Astrouski, the president of the Belarusian Central Council (who, incidentally, in the 1920s was the director of the gymnasium where Zoya and her potential suitors studied).

Zoya Koushanka's memoirs "Fräulein from the Belarusian Committee" were published in due course in the revived "Nasha Niva."

By 1947, Zoya was scraping by in Germany, even moving to a refugee camp in Wattenstedt. For some reason: either out of naivety or to sell belongings – she returned to Berlin, where in 1947 she was arrested by Soviet counterintelligence and sentenced to 10 years in camps – a "tenner" was given then to those who could not be properly accused. For comparison: the persistent Larysa Hienijush was handed 25 years.

Zoya Koush returned from Soviet concentration camps only after the amnesty for political prisoners, announced on September 17, 1955. She arrived in Vilnius only half a year after her mother's death. There were no relatives left there and very few from the pre-war Belarusian circle. Zoya reclaimed the house on Letnyaya Street (Vasaros) 7, bought and expanded by her father in his time. By the time of her return, squatters were already living there.

Other Belarusians also returned to Vilnius – Gulag prisoners who tried to socialize in the new, already Lithuanian conditions, sticking together. One of them was Alyaksandr Kratovich. In the early 1960s, 50-year-old Zoya Koush married him. She did not know that in the camp Alyaksandr Kratovich informed on other Belarusian prisoners, and some historians consider his marriage to the no-longer-young Zoya to be part of a special assignment to infiltrate Belarusian circles. His codename as an agent was "Shkval" (Squall), and he methodically collected information about Belarusian figures – including Larysa Hienijush.

Documentary evidence of this was found when Lithuania opened the archives of the Soviet KGB.

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Fragment of a document from the KGB of the Lithuanian SSR, revealing the identity of agent Shkval. Source: Special Archive of Lithuania

Agent Shkval and Agent Arefyev: How the KGB surrounded Larysa Hienijush with informers she would never have suspected

But life also took its revenge on Kratovich. Helpless and sick "Maksimych" was housed in an old "servant's room" with a rotten floor towards the end of his life, deprived of any attention or care. For in the house lived "dogs" – four small yapping mongrels who slept on sofas and replaced family and friends for Pani Zoya. And so he died of cancer in that kennel. From the same disease, in complete moral solitude and embittered against the whole world, the recipient of those love letters herself would soon die. This is what Siarhei Shupa writes: he has exceptionally interesting memoirs about Zoya Koushanka, about her wild misanthropy and bourgeois arrogance.

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Grave of Alyaksandr Kratovich in the St. Euphrosyne Cemetery in Vilnius. Photo: "Nasha Niva"

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Zoya Koush is buried not far from her husband, but not next to him. She was buried with her parents. Photo: "Nasha Niva"

But despite her character, Koushanka preserved those letters with youthful declarations of love until the end of her life, and that's how they ended up in the collection of the Vilnius Belarusian Museum.

It's worth visiting the exhibition to read them, to see that paper, those handwriting styles, books, and objects of that time. The exhibits shown at the exhibition provide an opportunity to see what worried Belarusians of that era and how.

The exhibition about Belarusian life a hundred years ago, in 1926, will run until February 18. It can be viewed on the museum's working days – which means Wednesday to Sunday from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Admission to the exhibition is free. The museum is located in Vilnius at Vilniaus Street 20, entrance from the courtyard. And for those not in Vilnius, the museum invites you to explore the exhibition exhibits in its virtual repository, where you can browse the displayed books and examine the letters more closely.

"In a hundred years, we'll do an exhibition about 2026," the museum staff warn menacingly, making us ponder what we write to whom in our threads.

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