Tatsiana Astrouskaya’s book is a pioneering study of dissident intellectuals in Soviet Belarus from the late 1960s to the advent of Glasnost and Perestroika. Based on the author’s Ph.D. dissertation completed at the University of Greifswald, the book expands our knowledge of the Soviet dissident scene in the national republics in general and introduces English-speaking audiences to late Soviet society in Belarus in particular. Astrouskaya’s monograph is part of the “Historische Belarus-Studien” series published by Harrassowitz, an ambitious project intended to bring greater scholarly attention to an understudied country and its history.
Astrouskaya covers a wide range of intellectual types and discourses in her study, from nationally-minded autodidacts to high-ranking bureaucrats in the official Soviet writers’ hierarchy. Drawing on Homi Bhabha, she aims to explore the “third space” between dissent and conformity, a sphere she calls “nonconformity” or “cultural dissent” as opposed to “political dissent”. However, rather than engaging with scholarship on Soviet dissidents in general, Astrouskaya situates her research primarily within Belarusian intellectual history. She argues that Belarus offered ideal conditions for this nonconformist space because of its historical status as a borderland and because many Belarusians traditionally identified as “locals” (tuteishiya) in defiance of outside attempts at categorization (p. 11–12). At the same time, Astrouskaya con-cedes that post-war Soviet Belarus had comparatively less potential for dissent because of an unprecedented level of peace and prosperity, a lack of international attention that might have protected active dissidents, and strong ideological control due to the republic’s border status.
The book is divided into six chapters and a conclusion. Following the introduction, chapter 2 outlines the emergence and development of a Belarusian intelligentsia from the mid-nineteenth century to Stalin’s death in 1953. Given the formative experience of repressive regimes, at times rapidly changing political circumstances, and foreign occupations, Astrouskaya shows that distance from power and ingenuity in handling restrictions on print media were constitutive elements of the nascent Belarusian intellectual scene. Chapter 3 takes up this thread and offers an overview of events from de-Stalinization to the eve of Perestroika, the main period under review. While this summary is useful, the chapter’s focus on individuals and their works at times does not achieve its intended comprehensiveness. Moreover, it renders some of the more detailed exploration over the subsequent two chapters repetitive.
The bulk of the evidence is presented in chapters 4 and 5. Astrouskaya first portrays a number of key Belarusian intellectuals in order to demonstrate that there were many ways to deviate from official Soviet conformity. For instance, Vasil’ Bykau was one of the most popular and decorated Soviet Belarusian writers, yet his depiction of the Second World War also earned him much criticism. His wartime novella “The Dead Feel No Pain” (Mertvym ne balits) was published in the Soviet literary journal Novy mir in 1966 but could not be re-printed until 1984 and private correspondence, unearthed by Astrouskaya, shows Bykau’s increasing frustration with the Soviet regime in the 1970s. Unlike Bykaŭ, Uladzimir Karatkevich was not part of the “Soviet writers’ hierarchy” (p. 97). Evading Soviet propaganda discourse, Karatkevich’s historical novels focus on the pre-Soviet period: for example, his “Flocks Under Your Sickle” (Kalasy pad siarpom tvaim) is credited with introducing Kastus Kalinouski, a local hero of the 1863 Polish uprising, into Belarusian national narratives. Larysa Heniiush represents yet another kind of nonconformity: a victim of late Stalinist repressions, she remained a staunch opponent of Soviet rule, which she considered alien to Belarus, and cultivated contacts to a variety of Belarusian dissidents both at home and abroad after her rehabilitation in 1956.
Astrouskaya then moves on to present key texts of Belarusian self-published literature (samvydat in Belarusian). Again, the examples are well-chosen to illustrate the scope of the grey area occupied by Belarusian cultural dissidents. Appearing in 1968, Mikola Ermalovich’s „Following the Trail of a Myth“ (Pa sliadakh adnaho mifa) is generally considered the first Belarusian samizdat. A teacher by training, Ermalovich was also an autodidact historian: Pa sliadakh adnaho mifa explores the Belarusian heritage of the Early Modern Great Duchy of Lithuania. At the same time, however, Ermalovich published works through official channels. A similar case in point is the poem „A Tale of Bald Mountain“ (Skaz pra Lysuiu Haru), a satire on the Writers’ Union anonymously circulated by Nil Hilevich – himself a member of the union.
Astrouskaya’s last chapter focuses on the impact of two “outside challenges” on the cultural dissident scene, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe and antisemitism. The author shows that, perhaps surprisingly, the Belarusian intelligentsia responded slowly to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. While individual activists such as Ales Adamovich had long warned against nuclear war, mass protests started only with the first Chernobyl Rally (Charnobyl’ski shliakh) in September 1989. Astrouskaya’s investigation of Belarusian antisemitism also produces interesting results: although many Belarusian nonconformist intellectuals rejected official Soviet anti-Zionism, some of their works deployed anti-Semitic stereotypes, claiming that Jews supported communism or were only guests in Belarus. However, given that Astrouskaya herself points to the deep roots of these narratives within Belarusian intellectual traditions, it is not clear why she considers antisemitism to be an “outside” factor.
Somewhat belatedly, Astrouskaya’s conclusion attempts to classify dissent and the intelligentsia in post-war Soviet Belarus. Not all of the reasons for dissent she presents can be concluded from the previous chapters: Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture and the destruction it brought to rural Belarusian folk culture is mentioned here for the first time in the book, and the Chernobyl disaster – as shown in chapter 6 – started to mobilize people only in 1989. Indeed, the only concern shared by (almost) all of the individuals portrayed in the book appears to have been the increasing oppression of the Belarusian language. In the same vein, Astrouskaya’s taxonomy of the Belarusian intelligentsia, distinguishing between a creative intelligentsia, human rights activists, nationalists, and the 1980s generation, is not reflected in the previous chapters.
On the whole, Astrouskaya’s main argument – that nonconformity in Soviet Belarus was a grey area covering a broad scope of attitudes and actions – is convincing. Nevertheless, some points of criticism can be raised. Despite her original findings, Astrouskaya’s study remains indebted to the established binary of the state versus its subjects, the same “traditional […] dichotomy” (p. 17) that she criticizes in Rainer Lindner’s monograph on the politics of Belarusian history writing.1 Notwithstanding her commitment to exploring grey areas, Astrouskaya does not shy away from strong value judgements: her dissident protagonists “finally make a step out of the circle of conformity” (p. 6) to achieve “high moral standards” (p. 2). Yet, she considers even Maksim Tank, First Secretary of the Writers’ Union and chairman of the BSSR’s Supreme Soviet, a nonconformist for his support of Larysa Heniiush (p. 86–87), and Belarusian Communist Party boss Piotr Masherau a “contradictory figure” showing “loyalty to the intelligentsia” (p. 58). Given this sweeping definition of nonconformity, who were all the conformists? Ultimately, Astrouskaya’s concept of nonconformity remains vague. Perhaps a clearer distinction between the object and the topic of this study, between Belarusian intellectuals and Soviet dissidence, might have been helpful.
Finally, it is a pity that the manuscript does not seem to have undergone any copyediting prior to publication. The sheer amount of typos and syntactical errors at times detracts from the reading experience. This is unfortunate, for the questions Astrouskaya raises about power and conformity in the late Soviet Union are indeed thought-provoking and deserving of a broad readership.
Note:
1 Rainer Lindner, Historiker und Herrschaft. Nationsbildung und Geschichtspolitik in Weißrussland im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, München 1999.