Vasil Bykaŭ

Museum dedicated to Vasil Bykaŭ in his hometown

Vasil Vladimirovich Bykaŭ (Belarusian: Васі́ль Уладзі́міравіч Бы́каў, Russian: Василь Влади́мирович Bykov; June 19, 1924 - June 22, 2003) was an acclaimed Belarusian and Soviet writer, public figure, deputy for several terms of the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR, soldier in World War II, member of the Union of Soviet Writers, Hero of Socialist Labor (1984), People's Writer of the Byelorussian SSR (1980), Laureate of the Lenin Prize (1986), the State Prize of the Soviet Union (1974) and the State Prize of the SSR of Belarus (1978).

Most of his works are stories, the action of which takes place during the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and which shows the moral choice of a person in the most dramatic moments of life.

Biography

He was born on June 19, 1924 in the village of Bychki located in the Ushachi administrative district (raion) of Vitebsk Oblast (Byelorussian SSR), into a family of peasants. Since childhood he liked drawing. He graduated from eight classes of the school in the village of Kublichi, then studied at the sculpture department of the Vitebsk Art School (1939-1940), which he dropped out due to cancellation of scholarships, and at the FZO school (until May 1941). In June 1941 he passed the exams for the tenth grade as an external student.

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union Vasil Bykaŭ was in the Ukrainian SSR, where he participated in defense work. During the retreat in Belgorod, he fell behind his column and was arrested, Bykov was almost shot as a German spy. In the winter of 1941-1942 he lived at the Saltykovka station and in the city of Atkarsk (Saratov Oblast)., where he studied at a railway school.

World War II

Recruited into the Red Army in the summer of 1942, he completed the course at the Saratov Infantry School. In the fall of 1943, after graduation, he was awarded the military rank of second lieutenant. He participated in the battles for the liberation of the cities of Krivoy Rog, Alexandria, Znamenka. In early 1944, during the Dnieper-Carpathian Offensive he was wounded in the leg and stomach (he was mistakenly recorded as dead); the events after his wounding in combat served as the basis for the story «The dead do not suffer », he was in the hospital for three months. He then participated in the Second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, in the liberation of Romania. With the active army, he passed through Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria; he was promoted to lieutenant first, served as regimental platoon commander, then army artillery. In his memoir «The Long Way Home » «Долгая дорога домой» (2003) he recalled about the war as follows:

I feel a sacramental question about fear: were you afraid? Of course, I was scared, and maybe sometimes I was a coward. But there are many fears in war and all are different. Fear of the Germans: they could be taken prisoner, shot; fear due to fire, especially artillery or bombing. If the explosion is near, it seems that the body itself, without the participation of the mind, is ready to be torn apart by the wild torment. But there was also fear that it came from the back, from the authorities, from all those punitive bodies, which were no less in war than in times of peace. Even more.

Postwar

After the end of the war, he lived in Grodno (since 1947), worked in workshops, as well as in the editorial office of the regional newspaper «Grodnenskaya Pravda» (until 1949). In the period from 1949 to 1955, he again served in the Soviet Army, in 1955 he finally retired to the reserve with the rank of major. From 1955 to 1972, he returned to work in the newspaper Grodno Pravda . Since 1959, he was a member of the Union of Soviet Writers between 1972 and 1978 he was Secretary of the Grodno branch of the Union of Writers of the Byelorussian SSR.

In 1978 he moved to Minsk. He was elected deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR in 1978-1989.

In 1988 he became one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front Party. In 1988 he was a member of the State Investigative Commission for Soviet Crimes in Kurapaty. In 1989 he was elected People's Deputy of the USSR, he entered the Group of Interregional Deputies.

In the 1994 presidential election, he became a confidant of Zenon Poznyak. Speaking of Poznyak's defeat in the elections, he wrote that at the end of the 20th century, the Belarusian people "were not so much concerned with the problem of revival as with the problem of survival." He described Aleksandr Lukashenko as "a pragmatic and arrogant director of a state farm, whose ideas were as simple as a cow's buzz." bread, gasoline, gas, without which it was impossible not just to "revive, but to survive the winter until spring."

He headed the organizing committee of the rally that took place on March 24, 1996, on the eve of the signing of the first integration agreements between Belarus and Russia. The rally became part of the “Minsk Spring”. The party organizer of the rally was the Belarusian Popular Front.

Since the end of 1997, he lived abroad as a political refugee: at first, at the invitation of the PEN Center in Finland, he lived in the vicinity of Helsinki, then, after receiving an invitation from the PEN Center in the Federal Republic of Germany, moved to Germany and then to the Czech Republic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. He returned to his homeland just a month before his death.

Bykaŭ's literary achievement lies in his starkly realistic, though touched with lyricism, depictions of World War II battles, usually with a small number of characters. In the ferocity of the encounter they face moral dilemmas both against their enemies and within their own Soviet world burdened by ideological and political constraints. This approach brought vicious accusations of "false humanism" by some Red Army generals and the Communist Party press. Other reviews praised his uncompromising writing. "Vasil Bykaŭ is a very courageous and uncompromising writer, rather with the stamp of Solzhenitsyn," wrote Michael Glenny in Partisan Review in 1972. Bykaŭ was one of the Soviet Union's most admired writers. In 1980 he received the honorary title of People's Writer of the Byelorussian SSR.

Death and Burial

Vasil Vladimirovich Bykov died on June 22, 2003 at 8:30 p.m. of a malignant stomach tumor in the intensive care unit of the Borovlyany Cancer Hospital near Minsk. The farewell ceremony took place on June 25 at the House of Writers in the capital, where the writer was celebrated according to the rite of the Greek-Catholic Church, and the coffin was covered with a white-red-white flag. After the funeral service, the funeral procession, whose number of participants amounted to about forty thousand people, headed along the then Francysk Skaryna avenue (today Independence avenue) to the Moskovsky Cemetery, where Bykov was buried in what is known as " Alley of the Famous». Among the numerous delegations that arrived at the funeral were the renowned writers: Yuri Chernichenko, Valentin Oskotsky, Rimma Kazakova, among others.

The President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, was not at the funeral: he was on a working visit to the Gomel region. However, a wreath was placed in the name of the head of state at the grave of the village writer, but the ribbons bearing the words 'President' were torn from the wreath.

Medals and awards

Museum of Belarusian writer Vasil Byka Sicilia

• Lenin Order (1984)
• Red Star Order (1944)
• Order of the Red Flag of Labour (1974)
• Jakub Kolas State Prize of the Belarus SSR (for the story The third rocket1964)
• Medal of the 20th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 (1965)
• USSR State Award (by Live until dawn1974)
• Jakub Kolas State Prize of the Belarus SSR (for the story Wolves' flock and Your battalion1978)
• People's Writer of the Belarus SSR (1980)
• Hero of Socialist Work (1984)
• Order of the Home War of 1.♪ degree (1985)
• Lenin Prize (by Sign of misfortune1986)
• Order of Friendship of Peoples (1994)
• Order of Francysk Skaryna (Bielorrusia, 1994)
• San-Valentino International Gold Award (1998)

Caricature of Vasil Bykau

Some of his most outstanding works

Filmography

Films based on his worksː