Arrested and Saved: Fiaduta Published a Book About the Main Work of Belarusian Literature

Five years ago, on April 11, 2021, the FSB detained a group of Belarusians in Moscow, who were then handed over to the KGB of Belarus and accused of allegedly preparing a coup against the regime of Alexander Lukashenka. Among those detained was writer and journalist Aliaksandr Fiaduta. He jokingly wrote about that arrest: "This is the first time in many years that I have had free time."

And this time, as a wordsmith, he dedicated to realizing an idea he had harbored for a very long time — to create a thorough commentary on Uladzimir Karatkevich's main Belarusian historical novel "Ears Under Your Sickle": "I had the text of the novel and clean notebooks."

However, due to the impossibility of accessing a library where he could see what other authors had written about Karatkevich's novel, Aliaksandr Fiaduta changed his initial concept and decided to present "his understanding of the novel, his interpretation" as a result of many years of reading it.

The absence of opinions from other experts on Karatkevich's work is not a weakness, but rather a strong point of the "Lexicon," a mini-encyclopedia of 51 articles dedicated to the characters and various phenomena from the novel. Aliaksandr Fiaduta in fact shares what was most precious to him behind bars, and what can be read between the lines. As a result, the "Lexicon" is not only a book about Karatkevich's novel, about the Belarusian people who appear in it as various characters, but also a book about Aliaksandr Fiaduta himself, deprived of freedom, a book about rethinking the protests of 2020.

"Lexicon" was dedicated by the author himself to historian Adam Maldzis, as "one of the first discoverers of the Atlantis of Belarusian antiquity," but he died on January 3, 2022, without ever seeing this work. Moreover, while Fiaduta was behind bars, one of Lukashenka's main ideologues and the director of the National Library, Vadzim Gigin, known for his pro-Russian views, succeeded in having "Ears" excluded from the school curriculum in 2023.

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Manuscript Held Hostage by the KGB

When the book was ready, the KGB became interested in it, in the person of Lieutenant Colonel Aliaksandr Akulich, who "graciously" offered to release the work. This had already happened to Fiaduta during his arrest in 2010, when he wrote a memoir about Hrodna in the 1970s-1980s, "My Little Paris," while behind bars.

But this time, the KGB lieutenant colonel did not keep his word, and the book almost disappeared, like many other works of political prisoners. However, Aliaksandr Fiaduta decided to show principled determination to get the work back and declared a "medical strike" — refusing to take medicines that he needed due to his poor health.

Two weeks later, the writer felt completely unwell, but he continued his struggle for the manuscript. The prison administration played its ace: it decided to turn the 14 people who were in the same cell against Fiaduta, promising daily searches. Aliaksandr Fiaduta was forced to agree to take his medicine, but he did not lose hope of getting the "Lexicon" back, for which he began to "bombard with letters" the General Prosecutor's Office.

This struggle for the manuscript of the "Lexicon" with KGB Lieutenant Colonel Aliaksandr Akulich cost Aliaksandr Fiaduta a lifelong atrial fibrillation. Eventually, they agreed to return the manuscript, but with one condition — Fiaduta had to sign the protocol of his criminal case: "Thus, the notes about Karatkevich's novel turned into hostages."

And Fiaduta took such a step, after which the notebooks with the "Lexicon" were handed over to his wife. However, another condition arose from the KGB — Fiaduta had to promise that he would not publish the book about Karatkevich's book for another year. Ultimately, the manuscript was "freed" only after its author's release and deportation from Belarus.

And now it has been published by "Polatskia Labyrynty" publishing house in an excellent translation into Belarusian by Hanna Maiskaia and with a preface by Siarhei Dubavets.

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"Ears" as Our "War and Peace"

Former literature teacher Aliaksandr Fiaduta immediately dots all the i's regarding the perfection of Belarusian literature and its explanation of the times. Belarusians are sometimes reproached that we do not have works like Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace." This is done by those who are not well acquainted with our literature, and this comparison itself dates back to the Soviet school curriculum of the 1970s, where "Tolstoy's work" was seen as a peculiar ideal not due to its supernatural quality, but due to the number of references to this work in the writings of the creator of the USSR, Vladimir Lenin.

Fiaduta compares Karatkevich's "Ears" to "War and Peace," but sees a greater resemblance to the works of Walter Scott, and in terms of its incompleteness and the presence of 150 quotes from other literary works — identical to Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin."

The Horse as a Symbol of Belarus

The 51 articles of the "Lexicon" are arranged in the order they were written behind bars, which allows one to trace the thoughts and experiences of Aliaksandr Fiaduta himself in captivity. It all begins with "The Horse," one of the main images in "Ears."

Immediately, the black horse of the Black War and the two white horses of Ales Zagorski (Urga and Tromp) appear before one's eyes – this is seen as a transition from the struggle of individual partisans to a mass national liberation movement. And also, the white rider is a symbol of our "Pahonia" (Coat of Arms), a symbol of Belarus, and Karatkevich's white foal is the future horse on which the Savior will come "to save his white lands": "Karatkevich's entire novel is essentially about how the white foal grows and how its rider grows, preparing to fulfill his mission, destined to merge with the white horse into a single whole, to turn into a centaur." Further, Aliaksandr Fiaduta expands his understanding: "The white rider on the white horse becomes a doppelganger of Saint Yury (George), a symbol of faith in divine protection over the struggle for the liberation of Belarus. Belarus becomes the goal and the banner in this struggle, and Belarusianness (that is, the awareness of oneself as one of the Belarusians) — its necessary condition and characteristic."

After the symbol of Belarus, the next articles in the "Lexicon" are dedicated to "negative" characters, with whom Fiaduta himself evidently encounters behind bars — these are gendarme Musatov, Empress Catherine II, and landowner Konstantin Kroyer. In the latter, according to Fiaduta's apt remark, Karatkevich seemed to have hidden a description of the death of Joseph Stalin: "From a weakened, cruel totalitarian ruler, the entourage disperses, only having sensed his inevitable departure."

Was it not for such prophetic words that Lieutenant Colonel Akulich, who perhaps also read between the lines, decided to close Fiaduta's "Lexicon"?

According to Fiaduta, the main anti-hero of the novel is the Russian Empire: "An evil, anti-national and anti-human force." It is precisely this force that the main character, Ales Zagorski, a representative of the new generation, challenges, unlike the old generation, schooled by defeats, which realized the futility of forceful resistance to the empire: "They are full of faith in their victory, which seems inevitable and historically conditioned to them. And Ales Zagorski's final verse appears as a manifesto of a new political generation of citizens of the empire: "I am leaving." A new generation enters the stage of history." Is this not an image of Raman Bandarenka, killed with the involvement of Dzmitry Baskau and Natallia Eismant, close associates of Lukashenka, on November 12, 2020?

And what about the pear tree, with which the novel itself begins and which Fiaduta understands as a symbol of life's tenacity; it does not submit to its ancient enemy and embodies the immortality of an entire people. Here again, Aliaksandr Fiaduta seems to address Belarusians during the 2020 protests: "Like the pear tree, it does not prepare for death — it blossoms profusely. And this bloom is the life of individual people…."

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Kastus Kalinouski as a Belarusian Patriot

Aliaksandr Fiaduta also sees one of Uladzimir Karatkevich's main achievements as the created image of Kastus Kalinouski as a Belarusian patriot, for which the novel was eventually removed from the school curriculum by Gigin. However, as the Hrodna writer emphasizes, Karatkevich's Kalinouski can by no means be accused of anti-Russian sentiment, because here, in accordance with the official Soviet concept, there is a clear distinction between the Russian people and imperial power, as noted in one of the letters to the novel's hero Ales Zagorski: "You know... I have come to love the Russian people here. A noble, good people. And just as unhappy as we are..." The war in Ukraine has shown that this is not at all the case.

Instead, it was Kalinouski from "Ears" who became an example for many Belarusians, and remains so today: "One can say that in the mass consciousness of patriotically oriented Belarusians today, there exists precisely such a Kastus as Uladzimir Karatkevich conceived and described — bright, romantically elevated, with sparks in his eyes and a determined line to his mouth. One whom you could love and whom it was worth believing in."

And it is for such images that we love "Ears Under Your Sickle." But how does Aliaksandr Fiaduta understand the main character of the novel, Ales Zagorski, and other figures, or what is encoded in sugar, how does Karatkevich understand freedom? You will find the answer in the "Lexicon." On May 29 at 12 PM in Warsaw at the book fair at the National Stadium, Aliaksandr Fiaduta will hold an autograph session, and on May 31 at 12 PM, he will present his book there.

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