He was 87 years old.
Piotra Sadouski's daughter, Alina, announced his death on social media.
“Friends, late last night my father, Piotra Sadouski, author of the book "My Shibboleth," passed away at the hospice. The farewell is tomorrow, I will provide additional information," she wrote.
87-year-old Piotra Sadouski is a prominent Belarusian linguist who in the 1990s became a deputy of the Supreme Council, and later – the first ambassador of Belarus to Germany.
A native of the Polack region, a child of war, he lost his partisan father in that war, who died before his eyes. Having studied at the Suvorov Military School, he later transitioned from a military path to linguistics — fortunately, at the Suvorov School he was taught by the prominent translator and front-line officer Yazep Semiazhon.
Piotra Sadouski studied and taught foreign languages, worked at the Institute of Foreign Languages, the Academy of Sciences, and as a translator in various enterprises in Minsk.
The love of his life is the Belarusian language, and his personal paradise is North Belarusian dialects, which captivated him and which he knew best among everyone in the world.
"My path into linguistics began with Piotra Sadouski, with the memorable discussion about the explanatory dictionary, which his review "Time for Reflection" (Polymia magazine 1986, No. 5) initiated. It's like the DNA code that is laid down in a person at conception," wrote the prominent linguist Jury Patsyupa.
Sadouski was one of the signatories of the first letters in defense of the Belarusian language and culture — petitions that were still sent to Moscow. Later he was one of the founders of the Popular Front and triumphantly won in one of Minsk's districts in the free elections of 1990. Sadouski was such an authoritative person that in parliament, where the BPF was in the minority, he was elected chairman of the foreign affairs committee.
After Belarus gained independence, in 1992 he was appointed the first ambassador of our country to Germany in history. He established the embassy there from scratch.
In 2019, Sadouski, then 80 years old, was tried and fined for a speech against integration with Russia, in defense of independence, on October Square in Minsk.
His sometimes poignant and sometimes analytical memoirs «My Shibboleth» were published in 2008. It is one of the most interesting books about what a "self-made" person experiences in their heart — about an orphan from Vetryna, who with his own intellect reached great science and diplomatic heights. It is also about something intimately personal, like childhood in a post-war village, among only women, because all the men were wiped out by the war.
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Comments
Вечны адпачынак дай яму Пане, а святло вечнае няхай яму свеціць.
Выбітны вучоны,дастойны і сумленны чалавек Беларусі!