Russian-Language Writers in the Transnational Literary Space of Belarus in the 1920s–early 1930s: Paradoxes and the Inevitability of the Collective Project’s Failure

Abstract

In the years 1922–1936 in the Belarusian Soviet republic there were four official languages: Belarusian, Yiddish, Polish and Russian. There were educational institutions, theatres, print publishing houses and literary organizations of national minorities, including Latvian and Lithuanian. Russian-speaking authors who started in the circles of workers’ correspondents (rabkors) and literary studios, by 1926 formed the group “Zvenya” (“Links”), from which in 1927 the group “Minsky Pereval” (“Minsk Pass”) was separated. In the studies devoted to the Belarusian-Russian literary interrelations and the history of Russian-language literature in Belarus, the activities of this group are not presented. The article fills this gap and offers new aspects for considering the problem of Belarusian-Russian relations and non-Belarusianlanguage literature in Belarus. Despite a significant number of studies, both problems remain relevant. The material of the article controverts the ideologically biased position that considers Belarus as an indigenous part of the “Russian world”, and at the same time proposes a popular one in literary studies in relation to the period of the 16th–19th centuries (sometimes also the 20th century) the concept of “multilingual literature of Belarus”. The article traces the stages of the institutionalized existence of Russian-speaking group in the Belarusian literary space, from contradictory relations with the influential association “Maladniak” (“Saplings”) to the establishment of the Union of Soviet Writers (1934). It was used the archival documents, publications of Russian-language authors of the 1920s and early 1930s, and the verbatim report of the First Congress of Soviet Writers.