MINSK, 17 September (BelTA) – It is necessary to speak up after years of silence about the heavy footprint left by Polish authorities in the lands that had been severed from the Soviet republic. Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko made the statement as he hosted a meeting with ideology specialists, historians, and experts on 17 September on the occasion of People’s Unity Day, BelTA has learned.
Aleksandr Lukashenko said: “Whatever may happen today [in Belarus-Poland relations], we don’t think it is an error that for many years we’ve tried to live with neighbors in peace without throwing unpleasant historical facts into their faces. Well, there is no need to regret it. While we were thinking about friendship, foreigners portrayed us as subhumans and outright enemies. Both in culture, in science, and in mass media. As a result, [they] have worked out the policy that we face today.”
This is why, according to the president, it is necessary to talk more about the prehistory of the campaign of the Red Army. “We need to talk about it after years of silence about the heavy footprint left by Polish authorities in the lands that had been severed from our Soviet republic,” the president stressed. “Our people need to know that Belarusians were robbed. While ethnic Poland prospered and flourished, our resources were carted away. Peasants, who toiled as hard as they could in exchange for pennies, lived in poverty and under the pain of whips. And these whips fell on everyone, who tried to fight for their faith, language, for their own culture.”
It is necessary to also talk about the fact that residents of Western Belarus were deprived of the right to have their native tongue as the language of instruction, that Orthodox Christian temples were being closed, that national elites and the clergy were persecuted, Aleksandr Lukashenko is convinced.
“We all should remember that Polish prisons overflowed with Belarusian patriots, that the nation was being destroyed spiritually and physically in the cruelest manner,” the head of state pointed out.
One way or another these topics are already being discussed in modern Belarus. And there would be no need for the president to host a meeting in order to once again discuss these matters. “After all, we are gathered in order to find something new. A new direction that may catch the attention of people as young people say,” the Belarusian leader pointed out.
In his words, it is particularly important to highlight how heroically western Belarusians mounted resistance, how they united in fighting, how they craved to be reunited with the eastern part. “It is truly a historic example of people’s unity,” the president stated.
However, one may still wonder how efficiently these facts are presented in the country starting with school textbooks and ending with expositions in museums, tours to commemorative places, the head of state drew attention to the problem. Aleksandr Lukashenko focused on the textbooks: “If in school we manage to convince the children to accept what we want and what we talk about, then we will achieve success. Otherwise, it would be difficult to convince the kids to accept an opposite point of view later on.”
The president stressed that it is necessary to analyze focal points in all periods of Belarusian history and identify what dates and events are important, who heroes are, and who enemies are.
Follow us on:
