How the GPU closed in on Jakub Kolas

Apanski was only twenty-seven. But behind him was already a rapid Chekist career in Soviet Belarus. In 1920, as deputy head of the Special Department of the 16th Army, he suppressed the Slutsk Armed Uprising, which defended Belarus's independence. Even earlier, the Chekists fabricated a case and shot the Belarusian activist Fabian Šantyr, commissar for national affairs of the first Soviet government of Belarus.

It was October 22, 1925. The photograph, gifted as a memento of their joint work at the Belarusian studies teachers' courses in Slutsk, was transforming in the hands and mind of one of the GPU's leaders into the beginning of a major political campaign. Apanski had long sought a suitable pretext to strike at pro-Belarusian communists and the Belarusian intelligentsia, who were driving the policy of Belarusianization.

The first name, the first victim of the campaign, was on the back of the photo. Jakub Kolas.

Apanski had been hunting Kolas for several years. Already on December 28, 1924, when briefing one of the newly arrived Bolsheviks in Minsk from Moscow, he characterized Kolas, Yanka Kupala, Yazep Losik, and Zmitrok Biadulia as "intellectual-chauvinists," people who "introduce into literature sentiments unfavorable to the revolution, and at times counter-revolutionary tendencies." According to Apanski, "Kolas and Losik most firmly defend old views on Belarusianness."

A terrifying, yet not yet so ruthless Soviet "newspeak." For a loyal Chekist, the poet's biography was enough. Jakub Kolas had served three years for the Belarusian cause back in the Russian Empire. He wrote for "Nasha Niva." His uncle was Yazep Losik—one of the initiators of the declaration of the independent Belarusian People's Republic. Kolas worked at Inbelkult—one of the main, in the GPU's opinion, "nests of Belarusian nationalism." And in the summer of 1924, the writer's former student, Niczypar Miacielski, now arrested for distributing Belarusian proclamations in the Slutsk region, had repeatedly stayed at his Minsk apartment.

Павялічыць

On October 24, 1925, Iosif Apanski signed a search warrant for Jakub Kolas's residence at Starazhou Street, building 1, apartment 3, in Minsk. Manuscripts, notes, correspondence, and literature were carried out in sacks.

Fate had it that the GPU approached Kolas during one of the most fruitful periods of his life. In 1925, a new edition of "Symon the Musician"—one of the iconic poems of Belarusian literature—was published in the magazine "Polymia." Kolas extensively pondered the spiritual revival of the people and the future of the nation. At the same time, he worked on the Polesian cycle, which would later form the basis of the trilogy "On Crossroads," published the play "Strikers," and finished the novel "In the expanses of life." Jakub Kolas was not merely famous—at this time, he was an exceptionally popular writer for the young Belarusian nation, scattered by political decisions across various corners of Europe and the world.

The day after the search, the poet was summoned for interrogation by the GPU. "We know everything; now your fate depends on what you tell us," they hinted to him, suggesting that an underground organization was operating in Minsk, planning to separate Belarus from the USSR, and that he, Kolas, was leading this organization.

The poet answered Apanski and Ramizav, the head of the GPU's secret department, very cautiously.

Kolas constantly emphasized that he did not engage in politics and, under Soviet rule, had never participated and was not participating in any political organizations whatsoever. In the interrogation protocol, Jakub Kolas stated that he was only interested in life, the real situation of Belarusian workers, as this was necessary for his work on new literary creations. Kolas well understood who he was facing.

— Regarding the investigative materials and other documents presented to me, which indicate that I am at the head of a Minsk anti-Soviet organization, I can say that I have not been and am not a member of any political organizations under Soviet rule. I am absolutely not interested in such matters… I am currently interested in the new way of life, to use it in literature. For this reason, I conduct extensive correspondence and receive materials.

But Apanski was not particularly interested in the poet's explanations; he had already built his scheme of actions. After Kolas's search and interrogation, his Chekists created a new report — "Report on the Belarusian-Socialist-Revolutionary Chauvinistic Movement."

His goal was not only to justify the persecution of individual Belarusian figures. Apanski sought to convince the communist leadership that an organized "national-chauvinistic" movement existed in Belarus. And a decisive blow was needed, to be struck against the entire policy of Belarusianization and the Soviet government's cooperation with the old Belarusian intelligentsia.

However, Moscow already had other plans for Jakub Kolas. At that moment, it was more advantageous for the Soviet authorities not to persecute the most famous Belarusian writer, but to make him a symbol of their national policy.

The policy of Belarusianization was still ongoing. An active political Belarusian emigration created problems for the communists around the perimeter of Soviet Belarus. And Moscow sought to demonstrate that it was Soviet Minsk, not Vilnius, not Western Belarus, that was the true center of Belarusian state and cultural life. The political amnesty for participants in anti-Bolshevik Belarusian uprisings, declared in 1923, was still in effect, and Soviet authorities actively lured exiled Belarusian political émigrés back to the USSR.

Soviet Belarus needed authoritative names—well-known artists and writers—who would serve as proof of supposedly free national development in the USSR.

And in October 1926, Jakub Kolas, who had just been plastered with labels, was awarded the title of People's Poet of Belarus. A People's Poet was far more needed by the Soviet state than another person accused of "nationalism."

Jakub Kolas. 1926. In this year, he received the title of People's Poet of Belarus.

Kolas was granted a lifelong pension, made vice-president of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus, a deputy of the BSSR parliament, introduced into the governing bodies of writers' unions, and in 1935, allowed to speak on behalf of Belarus at the World Congress for the Defense of Culture in Paris.

However, when the political necessity to demonstrate the successes of Belarusianization disappeared, the earlier suspicions returned. In the 1930s, Jakub Kolas was openly accused of "natsdemawschyna" (national democratism), promoting the idea of the classlessness of the Belarusian nation, idealizing khutars (isolated farmsteads) and kulaks (wealthy peasants), and exaggerating the role and significance of the national intelligentsia.

In 1930, attempts were made to link Kolas to the fabricated case of the "Union for the Liberation of Belarus," but the authorities only loosened the noose after it became evident that even the "Chekist" evidence looked ridiculous. However, repressions affected Jakub Kolas's relatives.

In February 1938, NKVD officers organized another search at Kolas's residence—this time looking for weapons. In the same year, the chief communist of Soviet Belarus, Pantelaimon Ponomarenko, reported to Stalin that there were "31 testimonies" against Jakub Kolas, and that he "undoubtedly is subject to arrest and trial as an enemy of the people." And the NKVD had long "requested sanction from the center for the arrest of Kupala and Kolas, but the sanction has not yet been given."

And it would not be given. The Bolsheviks decided to leave Kolas alive and free. And from time to time, he would remind them of the "innocently repressed," of the "improvement of the status of the Belarusian language," of the ministries' duty "to conduct work in Belarusian."

Kolas lived his entire life effectively between state recognition and the constant threat of repression.

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