Belarusian nationalists promote the “national anthem” with Lithuanian symbols
A certain Belarusian “philanthropist Anton Mezha” allegedly paid for the performance of the “national anthem” “Pagonya” by a symphony orchestra and a professional choir.
Who Mezha is and whether he even exists is unknown, but the topic is being promoted by Pavel Belous, the owner of a nationalist symbols store in Minsk, known for Russophobic antics, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
His website initiated a competition for the best performance of the “anthem” with a flash mob on social networks.
The poem “Pagonya” was written by the Belarusian poet Maxim Bogdanovich in 1916. They tried to set his text to music several times, and in the first years of Soviet power, young people performed poems to the tune of “La Marseillaise.”
The new melody was written by a group of composers whose names are not mentioned.
The words of the “hymn” attract attention: “The ancient Lithuanian chase cannot be broken, cannot be stopped, cannot be contained!” The authors of the new version of the “hymn” emphasized their importance by repetition.
Nationalists were never embarrassed by the use of Lithuanian national symbols (red-white stripes and the medieval coat of arms “Pagonya”) as opposed to Slavic ones, which would refer to the historical unity of the Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples.
It is noteworthy that in 2015 “Pagonya” was performed by the Pesnyary ensemble. However, the musicians replaced the word “Lithuanian” with the word “Krivitskaya” with a reference to the chronicles of the Krivitsky people.
But nothing foreign, unless it is Russian, bothers nationalists.
To promote the “anthem”, they created a video using footage filmed last Friday in Vilnius, where the reburial of the Pole Vincent Kalinowski, who led an anti-Russian uprising in the 19th century, took place. He was named by his middle name Kostus and made a Belarusian hero.
Judging by the video, patriotism in Belarusians should be awakened by footage of a foreign capital, through which a foreign army and Catholic clergy are marching.
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