Belarusians will not be free as long as authorities glorify those responsible for mass murders – Łatuška

October 31, BPN. Belarusian events held in different countries to commemorate the victims of the 1930s Stalin’s terror campaign are important for constructing historical memory, said Pavieł Łatuška of the opposition transition cabinet.

“It is tragic and dramatic, but it is ours,” he said in his address to the participants at the Night of Executed Poets event in Warsaw.

Belarusian officials openly praise Stalinist practices while hypocritically turning a blind eye to the crimes of Stalinism, the politician said.

The law enforcement agencies “consider themselves successors to Stalin’s NKVD [secret police],” he added. “Belarusians will not be free as long as law enforcers have [Felix] Dzerzhinsky’s pictures at their offices.”

In the night of October 30, 1937, the NKVD executed over 100 Belarusian intellectuals, including 22 writers and poets. The order came from Moscow and these people “were eliminated first of all because they were Belarusians,” Łatuška stressed.

Since 1988, Belarusian pro-democracy activists in various cities around the world have held commemorative events for the victims of Stalin’s terror campaign. Until 2020, literary readings and music performances were traditionally held at Kurapaty, a woody place outside Minsk where the NKVD had carried out executions. After 2020, these events were banned by authorities.