Belarusian publishing during the interwar period (1918-1939) and the Second World War (1941-1945)
The materials published in the interwar period (1918-1939) reflect nationalist struggles over cultural and linguistic identification. During that time, the territory of contemporary Belarus underwent several divisions and included a brief existence of the Belarusian independent state, the Belarusian People’s Republic. The Belarusian People’s Republic which has existed as a government in exile from 1919 until today, was a source of inspiration and mobilization of nationalist literary and cultural forces.
Vatslaŭ Lastoŭski (1883 – 1938) was a writer, politician, historian, philologist, and the Prime Minister of the Belarusian People’s Republic (1919-1923). The Short History of Belarus is a relatively short book which contains illustrations of examples of old Belarusian orthography, portraits of religious and political personalities and writers. It is an example of a nation-building text where the author represents the history of Belarus as a succession of periods, spanning the beginning of the Belarusian statehood in the medieval Polotsk Kingdom to the cultural “golden epoch” in the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania. The book ends with a discussion of the politics of Russification in the early 20th century.
Biełaruskaja hramatyka dla škol [Belarusian grammar for schools], a Belarusian language textbook by Branislaŭ Tarashkevich (1892-1938), a translator, linguist, literary scholar, and politician, was printed by the publishing house Martin Kuhta in Vilnius. The book covers phonetics, orthography, grammar, and punctuation. The standard or “Tarashkevitsa” is often referred to as “classical orthography” as opposed to “Narkamaŭka” (from the People’s Commissariat), the result of the language reform in 1933 which brought the Belarusian language closer to Russian. Both Lastoŭski and Tarashkevich were among the Belarusian intelligentsia who were arrested and executed by the Stalinist regime and rehabilitated posthumously.
During the Second World War, part of the territory of contemporary Belarus was divided between the Reichskomissariat Ostland (which included the General Commissariat White Ruthenia with Minsk as its capital) and Reichskomissariat Ukraine (which included the southern part of Soviet Belarus). German powers allowed publishing in local languages on the territories they occupied, yet they were suspicious of proponents of independent statehood for Belarus. Belarusian language newspapers, journals, books, and pamphlets were seen as a very important propagandist informational resource for spreading ideas of the superiority of Nazi Germany, anti-Soviet, and antisemitic propaganda. Literature published in Belarusian was seen an effective tool to secure loyalty from the local population and from nationalist intelligentsia some of whom collaborated with the Germans. Books and pamphlets published during the German occupation are important historical resources for the study of ideologies and propaganda, and of literary and philosophical thought in the occupied territories in the Second World War.
The largest thematic part of books and pamphlets published from 1939 to 1944 constituted pedagogical and school literature (using Soviet textbooks in instruction was forbidden by the occupying powers), followed by folklore and musical publications (including scores) and works of fiction. Belaruskaia Narodnaia Samapomach [Belarusian People’s Self Help] was the civic organization permitted to legally operate by the German powers. Its activities included publishing but later were limited to charity work. Its Berlin section published a number of works between 1942 and 1943, including Symon-Muzyka [Symon the Musician] by IAkub Kolas, Ad rodnykh niu [From native fields] by Larysa Heniush, Belarus’ u pesniakh [Belarus in songs] and Historyja Biełarusi u kartach [The History of Belarus in maps]. (Turonek, 2002, p. 62)
German publishers published approximately one-fifth of books and brochures in the Belarusian language during the Second World War (Turonek, 2002, p. 68). The majority of these publications were political propaganda brochures, and only a few had an applied character (ibid., p. 69). One such “practical” publication is a pocket dictionary Sprachhelfer für die Verständigung mit weissruthenischen Landarbeitern [Dicitionary for communication with Belarusian farm workers] (1942) by Hans zur Loye, who wrote several short dictionaries for English, French, and Russian prisoners of war and for forced labourers from the occupied territories. During the Second World War, Nazi authorities deported eastern European civilians, many of them youth between fifteen to twenty years old, to Germany as forced laborers (Ostarbeiter, or “Eastern worker”). This dictionary is a small, pocket-size booklet. Each page contains three columns of words in German, Belarusian (Cyrillic alphabet), and Belarusian (Latin alphabet). The topics revolve around life and work on the farm.