Bagpipe Players and Painted Birds: Some Reflections on Writing the History of the People in the Marshes from a German Perspective: Annual London Lecture on Belarusian Studies, 21 February 2020

In: The journal of Belarusian studies, Band 10, Heft 1, S. 32-43

Abstract

Abstract
The article adopts an approach to the history of Belarus', which plays with imaginations. It opens up two vistas concerning the past that are marked by fictional texts. The former belongs to developments before World War I and is connected with a short story by Jakub Kolas, whereas the latter attends to events of World War II and is related to a novel by Jerzy Kosiński. In both cases supplements to the main texts offer insights into Soviet history, on the one hand into the era of revolutionary culture of the 1920s, and on the other hand into the political thaw of the 1950s. The result is an illustration of the metamorphoses that took place in the transitional region of Central and Eastern Europe in the process of Soviet modernization.