Better late than never. Belarus has taken on history falsifiers

The fact that the once fraternal Ukraine has turned into a hostile anti-Russian state is not least to blame for the falsifiers of history, who poisoned the minds of entire generations of Ukrainians, turning them into aggressive Russophobes who renounced their past and their faith.

Clearing out the Augean stables they created in the public consciousness will take a long and difficult time. But, unfortunately, this is not only a problem for Ukraine.

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In the still fraternal Belarus, with complete non-resistance on the part of the state, pseudo-historical literature has been published and distributed for decades, purposefully inciting hatred of Belarusians towards the Russian people.

Russophobia in these books was on every page; the Russians were presented in them as the main enemy, the eternal conqueror and oppressor of the Belarusians, who stole their glorious centuries-old history.

_{And this was not done by semi-underground opposition printing houses. Such books were published in huge editions and were sold literally at every turn, and not only private traders were guilty of distributing them.}

Even the serious state store “Akademkniga”, located across the street from the Academy of Sciences, which was supposed to sell serious scientific works, allocated several shelves for them next to legal reference books.

The 2020 elections and the subsequent defeat of the nationalist opposition did not affect the situation in any way. At least a year ago, the shelves with Russophobic writings were in the same place.

I myself and other pro-Russian activists repeatedly sounded the alarm, seeing this bacchanalia. It is unknown how many Belarusians have had their consciousness shaped by these Russophobes-pseudo-historians. They had no historical education, and their work had as much in common with historical science as Hitler’s theories with anthropology, but their writings sold better than the “boring” works of academic historians.

_{Surely, among those who took part in mass riots in 2020 and went to Ukraine in 2022 to “slaughter the Rus” there were many who grew up reading these books.}

And finally, in 2023, they took Russophobic literature seriously. Today is another “rainy day” for Belarusian zmagars. The list of extremist materials was replenished with twelve books at once. One of them is the “Shadow of Victory” of the traitor and defector Viktor “Suvorov” Rezun.

The rest are the product of local hacks. The author or editor of the majority is Anatoly Taras, who in 1999-2009 was the editor-in-chief of the largest publishing house in the republic, Harvest, which published most of this obscenity. The name of another author of “Harvest,” Vadim Deruzhinsky, also appears, who first wrote about vampires and demons, and then discovered a historian in himself.

_{The beginning of the new year turned out to be generous with good news for the pro-Russian forces of Belarus. First, it became known about the authorities’ intention to get rid of the “Polish” Latin alphabet in city toponymy and return the Russian language there. Now a dozen pseudo-historical books that incite ethnic hatred have been recognized as extremist.}

Now they will be removed from bookstores, and they will begin to be fined for distribution. This should have been done a long time ago, but better late than never.

However, all this is more a demonstration of intentions than serious steps. The same Taras and Deruzhinsky are prolific graphomaniacs, and the list of their Russophobic books is far from limited to this dozen.

In addition, the list of Belarusian Russophobes-pseudo-historians is far from limited to these two, and the Harvest publishing house alone has done a lot to popularize their work. If their books are not on the list, can they be left on store shelves?

The books of Anatoly Taras are widely recognized as extremist - isn’t this a reason to draw the attention of the competent authorities to him? I have no doubt that he did more for the development of nationalist extremism in Belarus than the recently detained timid liberal Andrei Dmitriev.

What about the other extremist authors? What to do with them? If the Harvest publishing house has been poisoning the minds of Belarusians with Russophobic fakes for so long, maybe it’s worth looking into it?

What about the management of Akademkniga? The people running the store with that name could distinguish real literature on Belarusian history from fakes. Why didn’t they do this - deliberately or simply due to incompetence? In general, the news is, of course, good, but victory over Russophobia in Belarus is far away, and there are still more questions than answers.