BELARUS AS A “CULTURAL PARALLEL TO COLONIAL AFRICA” OR ANTI-COLONIAL UPRISING OF THE COMMUNIST ALIAKSEI KAŬKA

Abstract

In the focus of this article is the uncensored text “Letter to a Russian Friend” by the Belarusian philologist, literary critic, and historian
Aliaksei Kaŭka (1937–2024). Written in Moscow between 1976 and 1977, the text was first published in 1979 in London in Russian (in the original) and in the English translation. The study explores the content of the work and its publication history and reception. The “Letter to a Russian Friend” represents the first Belarusian tamizdat publication, in the classical sense of a text produced under the constraints of censorship within the Soviet bloc and disseminated abroad. Despite this, its author is seldom, if ever, categorized as a dissident.
By focusing on Kaŭka’s biography and his “Letter,” this article seeks to address broader questions of how, in the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, local (national) intellectuals — who were often integrated into Soviet power structures and implicated in their cultural, political, and economic operations — began to challenge these very structures. The article asks about the circumstances under which these practices of intellectual resistance emerged. As this study further argues, the issue of decolonization and critique of imperial legacies, both historical and contemporary, found specific resonance in the Belarusian context during the late socialist period. In doing so, this essay contributes to the reexamination of the idea of Soviet dissidence, proposing an alternative framework that moves beyond the
conventional heroic narrative. Instead, it emphasizes a nuanced analysis of the interplay between conformity and resistance, as embedded in the distinct historical context of cultural emancipation endeavours in Soviet Belarus.