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Lukashenka reveals that Belarusian literary classics were removed from general education schools’ course by his order

Alyaksandr Lukashenka revealed to a group of Russia provincial reporters on October 12 that it was by his order that Belarusian literary classics had been excluded from general education schools’ course.

“On my initiative, all nationalists, so-called writers, were removed from the school course,” the Belarusian leader said. “Nationalism is a terrible evil. We started fighting against it long ago. Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov and many others were thrown out of courses and we’ve restored all this.”

“When nationalists were in power, they spoke about nothing but culture and the Belarusian language,” Mr. Lukashenka claimed.

“How can we give up the Russian language if the Belarusian language lacks many terms in sciences?” he said. “Why should we invent anything? Russian has become a state language.”

By a classified directive issued this past spring, the education ministry reduced the study of Belarusian literary greats such as Yanka Kupala and Vasil Bykaw while works by Svyatlana Aleksiyevich, Syarhey Zakonnikaw, Volha Ipatava, Uladzimir Arlow, Mikhas Skobla, Vitawt Charopka and others were completely deleted from schools' recommended reading list.
In particular, the ministry censored Vasil Bykaw’s Ablava and Yanka Kupala’s Tuteyshyya.

The latter is a tragicomedy written in 1922 about a period right after the 1917 Bolshevik coup, which saw the control of Belarus go from the Bolsheviks to the Germans, then to the Poles and then back to the Bolsheviks. Mikita Znosak, Tuteyshyya's central character, is satirized for his chameleon-like nature and attempts to ingratiate himself with every new occupying regime.

Many of the works removed from the course deal with Communist terror.

Russian literary greats, such as Aleksandr Pushkin, Lev Tolstoi, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mikhail Lermontov, were never removed from school courses in Belarus. //BelaPAN