Place of the Works of Uladzimir Karatkievič in the Discourse on the Identity of Belarusians

Abstract

The main goal of U. Karatkievič’s literary output was always to revive and reinforce the sense of national identity in Belarusians. In earlier times, there had been no writer in Belarusian literature who would devote his whole output to the history of his nation. In his works, Karatkievič described their successes and failures and showed their attempts to gain independence and form the foundations of the Belarusian national identity to his reader. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was not easy to promote and disseminate the true history of Belarus, the beauty of the Belarusian language and the Belarusian national identity in the USSR. Karatkievič was often stigmatised and punished for his activity in this respect. This paper presents the impact of the writer’s output on the formation of Belarusian national identity. Karatkievič’s struggle with the stagnation or even backwardness of the Brezhnev era clearly manifested itself in his protest and fight for respect for the Belarusian language, the history of his homeland and the protection of nature and monuments of an immaterial culture. The writer saw the inseparable unity between those apparently different problems. Caused by such factors as the deliberate distortion of historical memory, social oblivion leads to the denationalisation and blurring of national self-awareness. Manipulating the past and enforcing the oblivion of various inconvenient historical events destroys the identity of societies. This is what Uladzimir Karatkievič wanted to oppose and did oppose with his works.