Soviet repression in Belarus () refers to cases of persecution of people in Belarus under Soviet rule.

Number of victims

According to researchers, the exact number of people who became victims of Soviet repression in Belarus is hard to determine because the archives of the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

in Belarus remain inaccessible to historians. ow doctors were exterminated in the BSSR– interview with Leanid Marakou, Belarus' top historian of Soviet repressions According to incomplete estimates, approximately 600,000 people fell victim to Soviet repression in Belarus between the

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

in 1917 and the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953.В. Ф. Кушнер. Грамадска-палітычнае жыццё ў БССР у 1920–1930–я гг. // Гісторыя Беларусі (у кантэксьце сусьветных цывілізацыяў) С. 370. Other estimates rise the number to more than 1.4 million people, with 250,000 sentenced by the judiciary or executed by extrajudicial bodies (''dvoikas'', '' troikas'', and special commissions of the

OGPU The Joint State Political Directorate ( rus, Объединённое государственное политическое управление, p=ɐbjɪdʲɪˈnʲɵn(ː)əjə ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əjə pəlʲɪˈtʲitɕɪskəjə ʊprɐˈv ...

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

, and MGB). 358,686 people believed to be victims of Soviet repression were sentenced to death in Belarus between 1917 and 1953, according to historian Vasil Kushner. Overall, around 200,000 victims of Soviet political repression were rehabilitated in Belarus between 1954 and 2000.

Effects

Science

According to Kushner, in the 1930s, only 26 Belarusian academicians and 6 correspondent members of the Belarusian Science Academy were unaffected by repressions. Of 139 PhD students (aspirants) in Belarus as of 1934, only six people escaped execution during the repressions. According to Kushner, the Soviet repressions virtually stopped any

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

research in Belarus. According to the Belarusian-Swedish historian Andrej Kotljarchuk, in the 1930s the Soviets either physically exterminated or banned from further research 32 historians from

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

with their works being also excluded from libraries. According to Kotljarchuk, the Soviet authorities thereby physically destroyed the Belarusian school of history studies of that time.

Literature

According to historian Leanid Marakoŭ, of approximately 540–570 writers who had been published in Belarus in the 1920s and 1930s, not less than 440–460 (80%) became victims of Soviet repression. This number includes Todar Klaštorny, Andrej Mryj and many others. Including those forced to leave Belarus, no less than 500 (90%) of published Belarusian writers fell victim to the repressions, a quarter of the total number of writers persecuted by the state at this time in the entire

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. At the same time, according to Marakoŭ, in Ukraine only 35% to 40% of writers have been victims of repressions, in Russia, the number is below 15%.

Medicine

A total of 1520 Belarusian medical specialists have become victims of repressions, this includes about 500 doctors, over 200 nurses, almost 600 veterinarians, several hundreds of family members that have been sentenced within the same legal cases.…А медсястра ў вар’ятку ператварылася
// Наша Ніва, 13 верасьня 2010

Notable victims

* Źmicier Žyłunovič, poet, writer and journalist, the first leader of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, arrested during the

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

and committed suicide in prison in 1937 *

Branisłaŭ Taraškievič Branislaw Adamavich Tarashkyevich (; 20 January 1892 – 29 November 1938) was a Belarusian public figure, politician, and linguist. He first standardized the modern Belarusian language in the early 20th century. The standard was later Russifie ...

, linguist, translator and West Belarusian politician, executed in 1938 *

Vacłaŭ Łastoŭski Vatslaw Yustynavich Lastowski (, , ; 8 November 1883 – 23 January 1938) was a leading figure of the Belarusian independence movement in the early 20th century and the Prime Minister of the Belarusian Democratic Republic from 1919 to 1923, as w ...

, literature historian, member of the Belarusian Science Academy, former prime minister of the

Belarusian Democratic Republic The Belarusian People's Republic (BNR; , ), also known as the Belarusian Democratic Republic, was a state proclaimed by the Council of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in its Second Constituent Charter on 9 March 1918 during World War I. The ...

, executed in 1938 * Fabijan Abrantovič, prominent religious and civic leader, died from torture in the Butyrka prison in 1946 * Adam Stankievič, Roman Catholic priest, Christian democratic politician in West Belarus, died in a concentration camp in 1949 * Jurka Listapad, Belarusian publicist and participant in the Belarusian independence movement and anti-Soviet resistance

Modern commemoration

In the late 1980s the influential pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus (the Belarusian Popular Front) has been largely inspired by the

Perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

and by the findings of graves on the former Soviet execution site in Kurapaty near Minsk. Unlike in neighbouring countries, the authorities of the Republic of Belarus under president

Alexander Lukashenko Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making hi ...

give only limited access to state archives related to Stalinist repressions and do not commemorate the victims of Communism on a governmental level. The democratic opposition close to the Conservative Christian Party, the revived Belarusian Christian Democracy and Partyja BNF commemorate the victims of the Soviet regime on 29 and 30 October, the day of a mass execution of Belarusian writers in 1937, and on the traditional ancestors commemoration day ( Dziady) in early November. In 2014 a website for the Virtual Museum of Soviet Repression in Belarus was created.{{cite web , url = http://www.racyja.com/palityka/stvorany-internet-muzej-pra-akhvyarau-r/ , title = Radio Racyja – Internet museum about repressions victims created (in Belarusian) , date = 29 October 2014 , accessdate = 24 May 2015

References

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic Political and cultural purges Political repression in the Soviet Union NKVD operations