Belarusian bookstore Kamunikat.shop opened in Białystok. How was the opening and what was discussed?
The bookstore Kamunikat.shop began operating in the Belarusian Culture Center in Białystok on September 8. After the opening, there was a discussion about the relations between Belarusians and Poles in the Białystok region during the period after World War II, writes Radio Svaboda.
As Yaroslav Ivanyuk, head of the Kamunikat book publishing house, said, at Kamunikat.shop you can buy books not only from their publishing house but also from others: Gutenberg, "Yanushkevich", "Logvinau", Skaryna Press, "Polotsk Labyrinths", "Chabor", the Center of Belarusian Culture, the Museum of Small Homeland in Studzianki, as well as the socio-cultural weekly of Belarusians in Poland "Niva".
"Everyone will find something for themselves here, as there is fiction poetry, prose, non-fiction, historical works, children's literature. The Belarusian book lives as long as you read," says Yaroslav Ivanyuk.
The store will be open from Monday to Friday from 3 PM to 6 PM at Warszawska street, 1A. This is the second Kamunikat.shop bookstore. The first one has been operating in Warsaw since spring, at the Center for Belarusian Solidarity.
After the bookstore's opening, a meeting was held with the writer of Belarusian origin from the Białystok region, Aneta Prymaka-Onishk, and translator Natallia Rusetskaya, marking the release of the book "Stones Had to Fly. The Erased Past of Podlachia" translated into Belarusian.
This is a documentary report about the history of Orthodox Belarusians in Poland in the period after World War II. It tells about the violence from the Polish anti-communist underground (units of Romuald Rajs "Bury" and others) against peaceful Orthodox Belarusians, who were sometimes groundlessly labeled as communists.
"This book, just like 'Biazhanstva' (Exodus), is the history of your family, but not only, because through it you show the history of Belarusians in the Białystok region. This is something that is a bit forgotten among us," Yaroslav Ivanyuk noted at the beginning, addressing the writer.
"People live with an untold, painful history"
Aneta Prymaka-Onishk said that it was in a certain sense easier for her to work on this book than on the topic of the 1915 refugee crisis, as many people still remembered that post-war period.
"But it was a painful memory. The biggest conflict of memory between the Polish and Belarusian perspectives. Here after the war, neighbors turned against neighbors. Stronger neighbors, i.e., the majority — against our people (Belarusians. — RS). After that came stabilization. Everything calmed down. And people to this day live with an untold, very painful history," the author noted.
She pointed out that when Belarusians in the Białystok region lived side by side with Poles, they knew what could be publicly discussed and what could not.
"To whom one could say that my grandfather was killed by gangs, and to whom it was better not to say it," she noted.
Ivanyuk remarked that Belarusians understand such a situation from the example of the Stalinist repressions of the 1920s and 1930s, when many also did not speak publicly about the execution of relatives.
Prymaka-Onishk decided to open this Pandora's box, although some historians told her that it was not worth stirring up, better to forget. At the same time, the writer saw that those from whom the Belarusian minority suffered, who killed Belarusians in Podlachia, were honored in public spaces in Poland — with marches or monuments.
At the same time, the opinion spread that if the anti-communist underground killed someone in the post-war period, it was traitors and collaborators. Eventually, Aneta Prymaka decided to tell her story.
Yaroslav Ivanyuk recalled at the meeting a story from his native town of Bielsk in the Białystok region about the impact of raids, which were also carried out by "Bury's" units, during which Belarusians were also killed.
"Not far from my native home lived an Orthodox man who never spoke in his own way (in the Podlachian dialect. — RS) and always decorated a Christmas tree on December 24. My father asked: 'Listen, Kolya, what are you thinking? You don't speak our language and you decorate a Christmas tree for Catholic Christmas.' And he said in Polish: 'Listen, Kolya, when "Bury" passed through our village, he did nothing. But from that time on, no one in our village spoke their own language anymore. And everyone put up a Christmas tree for Catholic Christmas'," Ivanyuk recounted.
He also pointed out that before Prymaka-Onishk, no authors in the Białystok region publicly raised this topic or used the vocabulary used by the people in print. He didn't mention that people, including, called representatives of these anti-communist units "gangs", and local Poles called Belarusians "katsaps".
"The borderland issue has always troubled me"
The book's translator, Natallia Rusetskaya, said that she was partly raised in the Belarusian-Polish borderland, when she came to her grandmother in Grodno. In summer, they would walk to a neighboring village to local housewives for milk.
"And it was called 'going to the Poles'. And indeed, the aunt spoke Polish. The borderland issue has always troubled me from the very moment my aunt first took me to a border zone, still closed in the Soviet Union — she worked as a tour guide — to a village right on the border. Houses, a small forest. There — already Poland. I see: nothing changes. I expected that across the border everything would immediately be not ours, all foreign, as Soviet propaganda said, but here it was just a line in the field," Natallia Rusetskaya recalls her experience of living in the borderland.
The second moment that influenced her interest in the borderland was an incident in a Polish village in 1995. Then Natallia heard the villagers on a bench speaking "in our way".
"We used to go to a village near Grodno and twisted our tongues speaking Polish. And here they are in Poland and speak in our way. This was a very strong surprise. Then I read a lot about different borderlands, where it's not like cutting a cake. It overlaps," the speaker recalls.
"My grandfather on my mother's side had seven citizenships in his life," Yaroslav Ivanyuk added about the uniqueness of life in the borderland.
To accusations that she, allegedly, cannot objectively write about this history, Aneta Prymaka responds that if Poles can write their view on this period, why can't Belarusians write about their experiences of those times. She considers questions about objectivity manipulative.
The author adds that she listened to various voices on this topic, read what had previously been written about the relations between Poles and Belarusians in the Białystok region in the post-war period, including documents in archives. She strived to look at the phenomenon broadly and describe it honestly. The writer shared that her research turned out to be interesting not only for Belarusians but also for Poles.
"It was important for me to write in the book that I am Belarusian. And to tell this story fairly, but with my own voice from our Belarusian perspective," Aneta Prymaka-Onishk noted.
"What captivated me was how masterfully Aneta combined personal sincerity with honest journalistic research and work in archives. We received a story that is impressive, that makes one think," summarized the book's translator Natallia Rusetskaya.
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