Vasil Bykau in dire straights

[curt fredric woolhiser]

>Dear Seelangers,
>
>I have just received information that famous Soviet/Belarussian writer
>Vasil Bykau (Vasil' Bykov) lives now in exile in Berlin, Germany. He is
>sick and lacks money for a medical treatment. Those willing to donate to
>the writer could do so by transferring money to:
>
>Konto Nr/Account # 0940205645
>Berliner Sparkasse
>BLZ 100 500 00
>Verwendungszweck: fuer Vasil Bukau
>
>I'll try to find out more on the case and report it to the list.
>
>Yours,
>
>


Here's some recent information on Bykau from RFE:


CELEBRATED WRITER AGAIN LEAVES BELARUS. Distinguished
Belarusian writer Vasil Bykau (born 1924) left Belarus for
Germany on 3 February. The independent "Belorusskaya delovaya
gazeta" noted that Bykau's departure followed the "hounding
organized by ideologists of today's Belarusian regime." Among
the Belarusian intelligentsia, Bykau is called "the
conscience of the nation." He is a staunch advocate of
Belarus's national revival and independence and supports the
opposition Belarusian Popular Front.
        From June 1998 to January 2000, Bykau lived in Helsinki,
where he was offered housing and financial assistance by the
Finnish PEN-Center. Under the re-Sovietization and re-
Russification policies pursued by Alyaksandr Lukashenka,
Bykau has become something of a dissident in the eyes of the
regime. The state-run publishing house Mastatskaya litaratura
(Belles Lettres) in Minsk has not dared publish his
collection of stories and novellas that were written in the
1990s. The book, titled "The Wall," was eventually published
in 1997 by the independent publishing house "Nasha Niva,"
financed by money raised among Bykau's readers. (Last month
"The Wall" appeared in Polish translation in Bialystok,
published with financial support from, among others,
Belarusian-minority organizations in Poland.)
        Bykau returned from Finland in early January to receive
the Russian literary prize "Triumf" in Moscow. On 15 January,
he was sharply attacked on Belarusian Television by Vladimir
Sevruk, a former ideologist of the Belarusian branch of the
CPSU. Following that attack, Russian writer Valentin
Oskotskii published in "Izvestiya" an appeal to the Russian
public to offer Bykau refuge in Russia because of the
hostility of the Belarusian regime toward him. The Belarusian
Union of Writers did not respond until the end of January to
the Belarusian Television attack, calling it "immoral and
inadmissible." Bykau told the 26 January "Izvestiya" that
"today in Belarus we have favorable conditions for the return
of the ideology that prevailed in the Soviet era."
        According to "Belorusskaya delovaya gazeta," Bykau also
received offers from PEN Centers in Russia, Kazakhstan, and
Latvia to reside temporarily in those countries, but he
eventually chose Germany, where he is expected to remain with
his wife for "several months."

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