Belarusians in the Czech Republic

Political emigration from Belarus began to concentrate in Czechoslovakia around the BNR consulate, which was created in November 1918. The consul in the years 1918-1925 was Nikolai Vershinin, who was also the BNR Commissioner for Prisoners of War Belarusians in Czechoslovakia. In 1920 he founded the “Belarusian Community in Prague” - a public organization, the coordinating body of Belarusian political and public organizations in Czechoslovakia (worked until 1925). In 1921, Nikolai Vershinin obtained from the Czechoslovak government more than 100 scholarships for Belarusian students. In 1928 he founded the Belarusian Foreign Archives in Prague. The main purpose of the archive is to collect and preserve materials on the history of the Belarusian national liberation movement. After the Second World War , the funds of the Belarusian Foreign Archives together with the Russian Foreign Archives were transferred by the Czech authorities to the Soviet government and transported to Moscow .

On November 1, 1923, the government and the Presidium of the BPR Rada (including Pyotr Krechevsky and Vasily Zakharka ) moved to Prague, which operated there until March 1943. At this time, Czechoslovakia became the main center of social and cultural life of the entire Belarusian emigration ^[3] .

In 1920-1930, thanks to the financial support of President Tomasz Masaryk , the Czechoslovak government and the Czech-Ukrainian public assistance committee for Ukrainian and Belarusian students, about 300 students from Western Belarus studied in Czechoslovakia, among them Viktor Voltar, Yazep Mamonka, Yanka Geniyush, Lyavon Rydlevsky, Nikolay Chernetskiy. At the Ukrainian Academy of Economics in the city of Podebrady in the years 1925-1927, the "Belarusian Student Circle" operated.

In 1924, a member of the Institute of Belarusian Culture, Academician Efim Karsky , who had contacts with representatives of the Belarusian diaspora, came to Prague as part of a delegation of the USSR Academy of Sciences . In 1925, well-known Belarusian writers Yanka Kupala , Tishka Gartny , Mikhas Charot and Mikhas Zaretsky , who met with Belarusian students, visited Czechoslovakia as part of the already Soviet writers delegation. When, in 1926, an academic conference was held in Minsk on the reform of Belarusian spelling and the alphabet from Prague Belarusians, one of the editors of the magazine Peravyasla, poet Vladimir Zhilka, was invited ^[3] .

In the mid-1920s, when the policy of Belarusization was widely developed in Soviet Belarus , the sympathies of many young Belarusian emigrants turned towards the BSSR. In 1924, the “Union of BSSR Citizens” was created in Prague, which actively promoted the Soviet ideology and campaigned to go to Soviet Belarus after graduation. Since 1926, the organization published the journal Pramen, funded through the embassy of the Soviet Union ^[3] .

In Czechoslovakia, poets Vladimir Zhilka and Larisa Geniyush , Slavicist Lyudmila Kraskovskaya and literary critic Ignatius Dvorchanin , historians Mikolay Ilyashevich, Ignat Slanevsky and Nikolai Chernetskiy, public figures Nikolai Abramchik , Vincent Zhuk-Grishkevich , Lyavon Rydlevrov and Yan Kazimov, Yan Kazid ^3] .

In the interwar period, a number of Belarusian institutions appeared in the country - “Association of Belarusian Student Organizations”, “Belarusian (Krivich) Cultural Society named after Francis Skorina ”, “Belarusian Scientific Cabinet”. For the first time in exile on a professional basis, the “Scientific Cabinet” began to collect and systematize documentary sources and print publications in all areas of history, culture, economics, and natural sciences of Belarus ^[3] .

In May 1940, the famous Belarusian opera singer Mikhail Zabeyda-Sumitsky moved to Prague, who began work at the National Theater ^[3] .

In 1941, “Correspondent courses in Belarusian studies” were operating in Prague.

After the events of February 1948 , when the Communist Party seized power in Czechoslovakia, a communist regime was established in the country. After the war, about 300 Belarusian families remained in Prague. Mikhail Zabeyda-Sumitsky continued to live and work here.

The life of the Belarusian community intensified in the 1990s. The cultural program “Belarusians in Prague” contributed to this. The Union of Belarusians of the Czech Republic named after Francis Skorina was founded. On October 31, 1996, a monument to Francis Skorina was unveiled in Prague. In March 1998, a meeting of Belarusians of European countries dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the proclamation of the BNR was held. On March 25, 1998, the Belarusian Center was opened at the Czech organization "Man in Need".

In the country there is a “Public Association of Belarusians of the Czech Republic“ Pagonya ”” ^[2] .

Ales Mikhalevich is a candidate for the presidential election in Belarus in 2010 , after a press conference at which he reported torture in the KGB jail , secretly left Belarus and moved to the Czech Republic ^[4] . In the Czech Republic, Ales Mikhalevich asked for political asylum and on March 23, 2011, the Czech Foreign Ministry announced that the politician’s request was satisfied ^[5] . In response, the Belarusian prosecutor’s office tried to put Mikhalevich on the international wanted list through Interpol , but the request was rejected as politically motivated ^[6] .

On July 3, 2013, the Czech government recognized the Belarusians as a national minority. The representative of the Belarusian diaspora will now be a member of the State Council on National Minorities ^[2] .