On June 10, 1925, exactly 100 years ago, the Council of People's Commissars of the BSSR (CPC) awarded Yanka Kupala (Ivan Lutsevich) the title "People's Poet of the BSSR."
Simultaneously, the CPC granted the Belarusan poet Yanka Kupala a lifetime pension and released him from his positions to create favorable conditions for creativity.
However, four years prior, in March 1921, Kupala was placed under house arrest, his apartment was searched, and his archive of manuscripts was confiscated by the GPU (State Political Department).
Following the release of his tragicomedy Tuteishyia in 1922, Bolshevik critics accused Kupala of "petty-bourgeois narodnikism" and "opposing the proletarian dictatorship." That same year, together with other Belarusian poets, Yanka Kupala attempted to establish the literary group "Vir." When the GPU began investigating its prospective members, nearly all of them, including Kupala, received negative evaluations. Kupala was labeled a "Belarusian writer-chauvinist." The group was banned.
The pressure continued into the late 1920s when the Belarusianization policy began to be curtailed. Yanka Kupala was accused of "nationalism" and of idealizing the past. In 1930, the poet's mother and sister were exiled, but they escaped.
That summer, the newspaper Zviazda published an article by Lukasz Bende titled "The Way of the Poet," proclaiming Yanka Kupala an "ideologist of bourgeois national revivalism." Soon, Kupala was summoned for interrogation by the GPU and accused of being the leader of the "Union of Liberation of Belarus," a group fabricated by the special services. In November of that year, he was summoned again by the GPU for the same case. On November 20, 1930, after being interrogated by the GPU, Kupala attempted suicide but was saved.
In December 1930, Zviazda published a "penitential" letter by Kupala in which the poet confessed to "mistakes" and "harmful views," promising to break with the "kulak nationalist revival" and "dedicate all his strength to socialist construction." Some believe that Lukasz Bende wrote the "penitential" letter and that Yanka Kupala signed it under pressure.
Following these events, the poet's literary activity did not revive until the mid-1930s. However, his works were subjected to considerable censorship at this time.
In 1937, Kupala found himself on the list of the next victims of repression. Local repressive bodies appealed to the highest authorities for permission to arrest the poet but did not receive approval.
On June 4, 1942, Kupala received a telegram summoning him to Moscow from the chairman of the BSSR Sovnarkom. On June 28, the poet died in Moscow after falling down a flight of stairs in the Moscow Hotel. Three versions of his death exist: accident, suicide, and murder by Soviet security bodies.
After cremation on July 1, 1942, Yanka Kupala was buried at the Vagankovsky Cemetery in Moscow. In July 1962, the urn containing his ashes was transported to Minsk and reburied in the Military Cemetery. The poet's mother is also buried there.
Maria Mikhalevich / MV belsat.eu
