Belarusian Historian Lost Job Because of Kosciuszko and Suvorov :: Charter'97 :: News

A historian from the Institute of History of the Academy of Science of the Republic of Belarus Yauhen Anishchanka has been turned out of his job. The historian wrote that Russian Generalissimo Aleksandr Suvorov was a butcher for the Belarusian nation, and Tadeusz Kosciuszko was a hero of the Belarusians, the Polish “Gazeta Wyborcza” informs. “Belarusian historian lost job because of Kosciuszko,” the article’s name reads.

Yauhen Anishchanka has written 13 books and 370 articles, mostly about partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Now he has been recognized a person inconsistent with job of an academician and a research assistant. The reason for that remains confidential.

Anishchanka believes that he was fires because the works he writes contradict the official ideology of the state. “The Institute’s administration has always told us that we exist to defend interests of the president,” Yauhen Anishchanka said. Three years ago the scientist wanted to defend a doctoral thesis on partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The historian believes that the partitions were a tragedy for ancestors of the modern Belarusians. A commission found his work “destructive” and he hadn’t been granted scientific degree.

Independent experts believe that the regime wants to destroy independent Belarusian historiography, but unlike the Soviet times, there are no chances for that, “Gazeta Wyborcza” writes.