Why was a Nobel laureate against Nobel for Vasil Bykaŭ?

The reason was unexpected: the Great Patriotic War and its place in Belarusian historical memory.

The initiative to nominate the world-renowned author from Belarus for the Nobel Prize in Literature has its own history. Vasil Bykaŭ's candidacy was proposed as early as 1999 by German intellectuals.

The idea was actively supported by the Polish writer of Belarusian origin Sokrat Janowicz, as well as Jerzy Giedroyc, a native of Minsk and editor of the Parisian magazine "Kultura," who had great influence in Polish intellectual circles.

"Bykaŭ is worthy of this award like no one else, being a rather well-known author in Europe," testified Sokrat Janowicz.

Giedroyc appealed to Czesław Miłosz with a request to support the Belarusian writer, along with another Polish Nobel laureate, Wisława Szymborska. Vasil Bykaŭ at that time was virtually in political exile, living in Helsinki at the invitation of the Finnish PEN Club.

"The fact that Bykaŭ did not become, and perhaps will not become, a Nobel laureate, is simply explained: by the anti-Belarusian nature of the authorities in Belarus, which is effectively colonial. Bykaŭ cannot count on support from his own country, because it is ruled by non-Belarusians, the Soviets. Only international support can do something here," Sokrat Janowicz noted.

In a letter to Miłosz dated November 19, 1999, Giedroyc explained that awarding the Nobel Prize to a Belarusian author could cause a rise in national consciousness in Belarus itself, strengthen the desire for independence, and weaken the positions of Alexander Lukashenka.

Miłosz, obviously, responded quite differently than Giedroyc expected:

"Belarusian historical consciousness, if it exists at all, does not extend beyond the Great Patriotic War – events and Moscow took care of that. And that Patriotic War was the war of the Soviet Union, and its memory serves the emotional ties of Belarus with Russia."

In his opinion, Soviet power shaped such a perception of the past among Belarusians, in which the Great Patriotic War occupied the main place. And the memory of it did not separate Belarus from Russia, but, on the contrary, connected them.

Павялічыць

Vasil Bykaŭ gained international fame primarily due to his war stories. It was this feature of his work that Miłosz considered an obstacle to the Nobel Prize.

"Given the desire for relevance, characteristic of many members of the Swedish Academy, awarding the Nobel Prize to a chronicler of the Second World War does not seem probable to me," he wrote. "And even if it were – should we strive for this in the interests of Belarusian civil society?"

Nobel laureate of 1980, Czesław Miłosz rightly observed that Soviet power made the Great Patriotic War the center of Belarusian historical memory. But did this mean that every writer who wrote about the war strengthened the Soviet perception of the past? This was the contradiction in Miłosz's position.

In the novella "Sotnikov," the main theme is not the victory of the Soviets over the Germans, but the choice between betrayal and death. In "The Dead Don't Feel Pain," Bykaŭ showed not only the brutality of war but also how Soviet people destroyed their own. In "The Sign of Trouble," war comes to a Belarusian farm, where the lives of Stepanida and Pyatro Bahatka were already broken by Stalin's collectivization.

Yes, Bykaŭ wrote about the war, but not about the one depicted by Soviet propaganda. There, behind the Victory celebration, the human being was often not visible – with their desire to live and the daily necessity to choose between life and conscience. And in Bykaŭ's work, it was precisely this human being who was central. Not the one who would necessarily win, but the one who wants to survive and at the same time not lose humanity. Bykaŭ showed a person facing a choice, not a state in the halo of victory.

Giedroyc himself tried to convince Miłosz with other arguments. For Jerzy Giedroyc, Vasil Bykaŭ was one of the symbols of independent Belarus. For Czesław Miłosz, his war theme remained a reason to doubt the benefit of the Nobel Prize for Belarus.

Giedroyc hoped that the Nobel Prize for the Belarusian writer would help Belarus free itself from political dependence on Russia. Miłosz, however, linked Bykaŭ's war theme with Soviet historical memory and doubted that the award would yield the expected result.

At the same time, in his letter, Miłosz did not question Vasil Bykaŭ's literary power. He did not believe in Bykaŭ's Nobel prospects and the political expediency of the campaign to support him.

Giedroyc never agreed with Miłosz's arguments.

On November 30, 1999, he responded that the war theme did not make Bykaŭ a writer of the past.

The editor of "Kultura" drew attention to completely different circumstances: Bykaŭ openly supported the Belarusian independence movement, was effectively in exile, was known in Germany, and his name was practically forbidden under Lukashenka.

"His attitude towards the independence movement in Belarus is beyond doubt," Jerzy Giedroyc held his ground.

For him, Bykaŭ was not just an author of works about war, but one of the symbols of modern Belarusian literature and independent Belarus. Giedroyc asked Miłosz to reconsider the proposal. He acknowledged that without the support of the Nobel laureate, implementing the idea would be extremely difficult.

But Miłosz could not be convinced. In May 2000, Jerzy Giedroyc admitted that his efforts regarding Bykaŭ had completely failed. In September of the same year, he died.

"This is not the concern to which I should devote so much thought, soul, time," Vasil Bykaŭ replied when asked about a possible Nobel.

And yet, in 2001, Vasil Bykaŭ was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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