Pavel Seviarynets presents “Belarusian Depth” in Warsaw

Pavel Seviarynets presented his book “Belarusian Depth” in the the Belarusian House in Warsaw.

The author said the idea to write the book appeared during the trial for the post-election protests, for which the former political prisoner was sent for three years to an open-type correctional facility in the village of Kuplin (Pruzhany district, Brest region). The book includes a series of essays about the Belarusian national idea, significant persons and political prisoners and the places where Seviarynets served his term for the post-election rally, a charter97.org correspondent reports.

“Maloye Sitna was a village with people and nature. I am in a brick box now. What can I write here? But God has his plans. Firstly, I met 100 inmates, each of whom is a separate book. Secondly, I demanded that I visit a church in Pruzhany, which is 6 kilometres away, every week. It turned out that a priest in the church speaks Belarusian and the church choir sings the Belarusian hymn God Almighty. The priest always found a new person with a car to take me to the church, or, if I already knew the driver, he found a passenger whom I could talk to. I was not allowed to talk to people in Pruzhany. But this trick gave me an opportunity to talk to the best people of the Pruzhany district for 15 minutes.

I got 100 new phone numbers in Pryzhany. I would never have got acquainted with these people if I hadn't been jailed. A part of the book is devoted to these people. Thirdly, it was my job. It looked bad in the beginning. I worked as a loader. My task was to bring parts of agricultural equipment to the counter. It turned out that chief engineers, farm machinery operators and kolkhoz directors from the whole Pruzhany district visited the warehouse where I worked. I got acquainted with engineers who watch Belsat TV, read charter97.org secretly and even leave comments. I had the audience which I didn't have in 2010,” the author said.

Seviarynets says that to book cover describes the Belarusians mentioned in the book, because they are “deep” people: “The cover depicts a well, but you see the sky and trees when you look in the depth. It's like the Belarusians. You look in the depth and expect to see something bad and black, but you see the sky.”

Pavel Seviarynets is a Belarusian politician, former political prisoner and political writer. He wrote the books “National Idea: Phenomenology of Belarus” (2005), “Letters from a Forest” (2007), “To My Brother” (2007), “I Love Belarus: 200 Phenomena of the National Idea” (2008).

Photo: charter97.org