Zianon Pazniak
Zianon Stanislavavich Pazniak[a] (born 24 April 1944) is a Belarusian nationalist[1] politician, one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front, leader of the Conservative Christian Party – BPF and one of the most prominent opposition leaders. He was the Belarusian Popular Front nominee for President of Belarus in the 1994 election. Zianon Pazniak has lived in the United States since 1996. Early life and education Zianon Stanislavavich Pazniak was born on 24 April 1944 in the village of Subotniki, in what was then the Baranavichy Region in the Byelorussian SSR.[2] At the time of Pazniak's birth, the village was occupied by the Germans due to World War II. He was born into a Catholic family, and natively spoke the Belarusian language.[3][4] His mother, Hanna Jaŭchimaŭna Pazniak, was a native of Subotniki and lived there almost her entire lifetime. Through his mother, he was the grandson of Jan Pazniak, who was a publicist and politician active in the Belarusian Christian educational movement and the Christian Democratic Union during its founding.[2] He was eventually arrested by the NKVD in Vilna during 1939, and according to one version, was held in a prison in Staraja Vilejka near Maladziechna until 1941, but the circumstances of his death are unknown. Soon after Zianon's birth, his father, Stanisłaŭ Janavič Pazniak, was drafted into the Red Army.[4] In December 1944, when Stanisłaŭ served on Eastern Front during World War II, he was killed, which left Zianon to be raised by his mother.[5] Later on Pazniak said that his life was not different with the loss of his father, as his mother insisted on imitating what she thought Stanisłaŭ would do when raising him.[5] When he was six, he stated that Russians starting populating the area due to collective farms, and stated that they were not understood leading to an anti-Soviet atmosphere in the village.[4] At the age of 14, he began training in photography under the local master in the area, a habit he would continue to do during the next few decades where he photographed the city of Minsk.[6] For his secondary schooling, he attended the local grammar school in his hometown of Subotniki.[7] When he was in the 10th grade, he was forced to join the Komsomol.[5] He initially resisted on the basis of his dislike of communism and foreign ideology, but he would otherwise not receive his certificate of maturity, so he formally joined.[5] After finishing his secondary education, he moved to Moscow at the age of eighteen in order to study astronomy at Moscow State University.[5] He stated that he was not definite on his choice of career: he had switched between wanting to do history, photography, and theater at the All-Russian State University of Cinematography and the Russian Institute of Theater Arts.[4] However, he returned to Belarus by train through Smolensk as he stated he disliked the city upon arriving.[5] He also stated he was told that he would fail by a vice-rector at Maly Theatere for not speaking Russian, and that it would be better for him to go to the theater institute in Belarus for acting when he decided to pursue it.[4] He then started studying at the Belarusian State Institute of Theatre and Arts in acting (briefly he entered journalism but switched out).[5] During his second year, he was expelled from the institute for being "politically unreliable" by the party committee.[5] During the winter after his expulsion, he slept at his friends' place while working as a stagehand at an opera house and as a photographer.[5] He was later reinstated on the persuasion of Maxim Tank, but chose to enter the Faculty of Arts instead.[5] He was expelled a second time before his final exams in philosophy to get a red diploma for allegedly tearing down a newspaper on the wall of the school written in Russian.[3] However, he was allowed to graduate from the institute in 1968 and defend his diploma after it was made public that he was expelled on the orders of the KGB.[8] In 1969, a year after graduating, he entered the graduate school of the Institute of Ethnography and History of Art and Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR.[9] He became notable during the year he entered for his publishing of the article "Caring for the Future" in the newspaper Pravda, which focused on the river Nyamiha (or Nemiga) in Minsk.[10] In opposition to Pyotr Masherov's plan to destroy it, he attempted to collect signatures to send to Masherov against it, but eventually went to the newspaper, where it was approved by Mikhail Zimyanin for publication.[10] Masherov decided not to go through with destroying the Nemiga outwards, until at least 1972.[10] He completed his studies at the institute in 1972.[7] Archaeological careerIn 1972 he started dedicating himself full-time to preserving the old section of Minsk and its conservation efforts by collecting signatures in the Trinity Suburb.[10] Upon completion of his university studies, Pazniak worked as an arts researcher.[7] He also started creating samizdat by using a typewriter he got from a commission shop about the destruction of the culture of Belarus, while also working on a dissertation about repressed individuals associated with Belarusian nationalism like Vatslaw Lastowski.[11] After a wave of Soviet political-administrative repressions in 1974, he lost his job at the Arts Institute on the basis of staff cuts.[11] Through Alexander Kuzmin, a secretary for ideology of the Central Committee, he was able to be reinstated, but was advised not to return to the arts, so he chose history.[11] Pazniak worked as an archaeologist at the Archaeological Division of the History Institute of the Belarusian Science Academy.[7] His specialisation was the Late Middle Ages in Belarus.[7] He was heavily involved in efforts to preserve the remaining section of the historic centre of Minsk, which was considerably damaged by the redevelopment efforts undertaken by the Soviet administration after the end of the Second World War.[7] He also became more involved in the literary movement in the late 1980s, writing books on the history of Belarus and poems.[11] In 1981 Pazniak successfully defended a doctoral dissertation on the history of the theatre. On 3 June 1988, Zianon Pazniak made public his research on NKVD mass executions in the forest of Kurapaty near Minsk, which he did alongside Yauhen Shmygalev.[12] He published the article in the newspaper Litaratura i Mastactwa (Literature and Art) under the title "Kurapaty - the road to death", where it was specifically published because the newspaper was relatively small, so it would be missed by Soviet censorship.[12] Vasil Bykaŭ wrote the preface to the article.[12] According to the book "Kurapaty: The Investigation Continues", which was published soon after in 1990, three boys in Zeleny Lug made the discovery of 23 of the graves on 1 May 1988, but Pazniak himself did not actually do the excavation part and only arrived after to document it and do an examination of the graves.[12] The article was broadcast on central television and republished in newspapers, and so the prosecutor of the BSSR, Georgy Tarnavsky, opened a criminal case into Kurapaty, which led to a commission being formed headed by Yazep Brolišs.[13] This quickly evoked a response in Belarusian society that was anti-Soviet due to the executions and also ignited independence sentiments.[14] In-depth excavations of the tract were conducted starting on 6 July, which Pazniak participated in, which eventually concluded that more than 100 thousand people were buried at Kurapaty.[13] Political careerFounding of the BPF On 19 October 1988, Pazniak led a meeting with other nationalists at the Minsk House of Cinema (now the Red Church) to create an organizing committee of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF) and also the movement "Martyrology of Belarus" to document repressions in the USSR.[15] The BPF was modeled after similar fronts that were under indirect government control in the Baltics.[16] Soon after this, thousands of people in Minsk marched to Kurapaty when the committee revealed its investigations into it, in what came to be known as Dziady-88.[15] During the events of Dziady-88, Pazniak proposed the idea of a cross procession with a requiem being performed for the victims, which was implemented.[17] The rally ended with preventive arrests and tear gas, but Pazniak read off the Front's declaration despite him being detained. The founding congress of the BPF took place in Vilnius from 24 June to 25 June 1989, as it was not permitted in Minsk, which was attended by about 400 delegates.[18] BPF was the first party in the modern history of Belarus following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[19] It quickly became popular as there was no other opposition movement, which also led to Alexander Lukashenko briefly supporting the movement and also giving a speech at a rally alongside Pazniak in Mogilev.[19] Parliamentary activitiesDuring the 1990 Byelorussian Supreme Soviet election for the 12th Supreme Soviet on an alternative basis, Pazniak led the BPF in the elections to receiving 30 direct members in the Supreme Soviet, which also indirectly included 30 others who supported the BPF.[19] Pazniak was one of the members elected in the 1990 election during the first round, and quickly advocated for a clear separation of the democratic fraction.[2][20] However, he received resistance as the authorities refused to register him as a candidate and the Central Election Commission invalidated nominations from the BPF, but under pressure, the members were re-registered.[21] One of his only actions during the time the parliament was the Supreme Soviet was to return national symbols as state symbols.[19] In March 1991, he led the BPF fraction to attempting to achieve Belarusian independence, thus also creating Belarusian citizenship and its own congress called the All-Belarusian Constitutent Congress.[2] These attempts were blocked by the Communist majority in the Supreme Soviet who instead supported President Mikhail Gorbachev's idea of creating a Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics, which Belarus intended to sign on 20 August 1991.[2] This led to security services wanting to form the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP), which Pazniak led the BPF to reject on the basis of the coup being an "unconstitutional seizure of power".[2] On 22 August, when the coup failed, a session of the Supreme Soviet was convened, which led to the BPF deputies drafting a package of bills and forcing Anatoly Malofeyev (the leader of the Communist fraction in the BSSR) off the podium.[2] On 25 August the declaration of independence was announced and Belarus became de jure independent.[2] Before the first session of an independent Belarusian congress, Pazniak led the BPF deputies into drafting 31 bills on matters of state, including a denunciation of the 1922 treaty creating the USSR.[2] All of these bills were later implemented during the session, except for private land ownership.[2] During subsequent negotiations in October 1990 with Polish diplomats about shaping mutual relations and the border, Pazniak opposed the Białystok Voivodeship being part of Poland, calling it "ethnically Belarusian" and thus supposed to be Belarusian land.[22] He also advocated for a special status for Belarusians in Białystok, and stated there was "anti-Belarusian terror" in Poland.[22] Eventually, he became part of the Constitutional Committee.[23] In 1992, he attempted to get a referendum approved, which got approved in April with 442 thousand signatures being sent to the CEC.[2] The referendum asked Belarusians whether they agreed to the early dissolution of the current Supreme Soviet and parliamentary elections.[2] The BPF wished to pass the referendum to carry out reforms in response to independence.[2] However, the majority of the Supreme Soviet did not approve a date for the referendum, and so it was never carried out.[2] In 1995, Lukashenko proposed a referendum that would abolish the white-red-white flag, the Pahonia coat of arms, introduce the Russian language as an official language alongside Belarusian, pursue economic integration with Russia, and grant Lukashenko the right to dissolve the Supreme Soviet.[24] Members of the BPF argued the proposals violated the Constitution.[24] After drafting a resolution, in April 1995 he condemned the Communist Party of Belarus for rejecting reforms and supporting the referendum, which he argued would strip a Belarusian national identity.[24] In response, he announced that members of the BPF, including him, would initiate a hunger strike in the Oval Hall of the Government House, which lasted only on 11 April.[24] He accused the government of using KGB Alpha Group members to storm the hall and stop the strike, and said the deputies were assaulted with batons.[24] He continued to lead the BPF members in not recognizing the referendum's results when it passed, which he called a constitutional violation.[24] Andrei Lazutkin would later mention that Pazniak accepted the results of the 1995 referendum, when in reality he criticized it for violations and that Russia was waging a cold war against the country.[25] During the First Chechen War in 1994, the BPF under Pazniak accused Russia of imperial aggression against Chechnya, and held a rally in support of Chechnya.[26] In early 1995, BPF deputies issued a statement condemning the war as an "imperialist campaign violating human rights", which was driven by corporate interests and a crime against humanity and demanded a withdrawal of Russian troops and Chechen self-determination.[26] Lukashenko claimed Pazniak had urged Belarusians ot fight for Chechnya with his statements, to which Pazniak sued Lukashenko for defamation.[26] After it reached the Supreme Court of Belarus, the court ruled in favor of Pazniak, but this was later overturned by the Supreme Court's Presidium on 11 September 1995.[26] He subsequently accused the judicial branch of ceasing to be independent and in favor of the president.[26] During the 1995 Belarusian parliamentary election, after the by-elections because of a rule for elections taking place that more than 50% of voters had to come to polling stations, no BPF representative was elected to the new Supreme Soviet.[2] Previously, a bill had also been blocked from being signed that would transition parliament to a proportional-majority system using party lists.[2] Pazniak had run in Smarhon, receiving 47% of the vote, the other candidate 40%, and 13% voted against either candidate.[2] As a result, since neither candidate had received 50%, the election was declared invalid and Pazniak did not win a seat in the new Supreme Soviet.[2] Subsequently, Siarhei Navumchyk wrote about the election in his autobiography, stating that the number against both candidates was unrealistic, as usually no more than 5% of voters ever voted that option, and stated that stacks of ballots appeared from nowhere, but this claim has never been verified.[2] 1994 presidential election.png) In 1994, he participated in the 1994 election as the Belarusian Popular Front nominee, gaining 13.1 percent of the vote. Pazniak’s candidacy was supported by the famous Belarusian writer Vasil Bykaŭ and a number of representatives of the Belarusian scientific community. The CSCE, in their report on the election, stated that Pazniak was the strongest advocate for free-market economics and Belarusian cultural and linguistic domination.[27] He rejected any entente with Russia, which led many to accuse him of being too nationalistic.[27] His opponents in the race turned on Pazniak as they alleged he was an extremist, and all accused him of wanting to take the country into uncharted waters.[28] The minority Russian speakers feared Belarusianization, which made Lukashenko seem like the best of alternatives.[28] At the end of the 1994 campaign, he tried to dilute his past statements to seem more central, and in a position paper, wrote to non-Belarusians to calm them about his policies.[27] In the newspaper of "Sovetskaya Belorussia" on 16 June he detailed his more moderated plans: a creation of a market economy, healthcare for vulnerable people, and an independent, neutral, and nuclear-free state.[29] He continued his opposition of Belarus joining CSTO and was against any form of union with Russia.[29] On 23 June the results of the first round of voting were released, with Pazniak receiving 12.82% of the vote, which was seen as an unexpected defeat for the current administration.[27] In previous public opinion polls, he had received a similar percentage at 11.6%.[27] The highest areas he got support from were the Grodno region with 21.21% of the vote and Minsk, where he received 20.98% of the vote.[30] He received majority support in the major cities of Maladzyechna and Lida.[31] He received little support in the Gomel region with 6.33% of the vote and in the Mogilev region with 4.68%.[30] On 10 July, the second round was released, with the turnout being 10% lower.[27] Since it was a two-round system and he was not part of the top two vote-getters, Vyacheslav Kebich faced Lukashenko with 14.17% of the vote to the former and 80.34% to the latter.[30] He later continued to comment on the election on the anniversary of it, stating that the results were due to the influence of Russia and the FSB and that both Kebich and Lukashenko were Russian agents who prevented him from coming to power.[32] He stated it was actually him who went to the second round - Not Kebich - and that he had won 22% of the votes in the first round.[32] Alyaksandr Milinkevich commented later that he did not vote for Pazniak as he stated he was too nationally orientated for people to vote for, and Valery Karbalevich stated that Pazniak could not expand to a wider space of being moderate.[33] Exile and internaitonal advocacyChernobyl Way and start of exile After the start of Minsk Spring against the creation of a Union State, on 25 March 1996, Pazniak sent a letter to his wife stating he could not return home because he was being "hunted by security forces", and so he needed to go underground with Navumchyk.[34] He stated they were going to be charged criminally for organizing Minsk Spring, and that agents stood outside the BPF headquarters and received summons.[34] On the night of 26-27 March, they fled together through Russia to Kyiv and hid in a safe house, initially only planning to go in exile for a few weeks to inform European leaders about Lukashenko's threatening actions against them.[34] Eventually, Pazniak briefly returned to Minsk on 26 April to participate in the rally Chernobyl Way to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster.[34] During the rally, he led a moment of silence for Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev after his assassination.[34] This statement was very controversial and dealt a blow to Pazniak's reputation, as Belarusians had seen the Battle of Grozny previously and so did not agree.[34] After the rally ended, Pazniak reached the BPF headquarters, but special forces under KGB chairman Vladimir Matskevich and the Deputy Interior Minister stormed the building and attempted to detain him, but he escaped.[34] According to Pazniak, a directive appeared at border checkpoints to detain him upon entry, which he stated in the newspaper Narodnaya Volya in August 1996.[34] In early May, Pazniak left the country and briefly stayed in Europe. He stopped in Poland in May, where he stated that Poland had always oppressed Belarus and claimed the birth of Belarusian consciousness was solely the work of the Soviet Union.[35] Afterwards, he went to the United States in July and requesting political asylum.[34] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded that there was no political or physical persecution against Pazniak.[34] On 23 August 1996, Pazniak was granted asylum, which was the first case since the collapse of the Soviet Union in which a citizen of a post-Soviet country received asylum for political reasons.[34] After arriving, on 26 August, he announced he planned to continue to be in opposition, but instead try to focus on international attention on human rights violations in Belarus and mobilize Belarusians living abroad.[36] He also thought that he would not stay in the United States long, saying the regime of Lukashenko would only last another year or so.[36] On 19 June 1997, Belarus's prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against Pazniak, accusing him of incitement to ethnic hatred against the Russian people.[37]They stated that this occurred in the newspapers Pahonia and Svaboda, which was a criminal case under Article 71 of the Criminal Code.[37] Proceedings against the case were eventually suspended, as the prosecutors could not charge him, given that he was living outside of Belarus, and a final decision could only be made following an interrogation in Belarus.[37] In November 1997, he confirmed that the main objective of the BPF at the time was to force the resignation of Lukashenko, since he stated it was impossible to do an impeachment process under his regime.[38] He stated that afterwards, BPF intended to abolish the presidency and create a parliamentary republic.[38] Breakup of BPF and diaspora leadershipFor the first two years after his emigration, Pazniak managed the BPF through fax messages.[2] During the 1999 Belarusian presidential election, members of the opposition, including the BPF, tried to generate popular support.[39] Pazniak was accused of disrupting the electoral campaign by announcing he was going to run, but later withdrew his candidacy citing provocations.[39] It has been theorized that he did this to stop the other opposition candidate, former Prime Minister Mikhail Chigir, from gaining power among the opposition.[39] Due to this, he started to lose support within the BPF because they viewed it as him refusing to work with other political parties, which he had never done before.[39] Pazniak responded by attempting to portray himself as the only opposition candidate who could promote Belarus's independence, and he started attacking other opposition politicians and accusing them of collaborating with Russia, like Chigir.[39] However, even before the elections, Pazniak had already been unpopular among some members, due to his refusal to change his methods of perceiving the BPF as self-sufficient and making the other parties adapt, even though certain members of the BPF wanted to compromise with the other opposition party.[2] Others accused him of authoritarianism when leaving the BPF, after he announced that all his deputies would be replaced and the "discussion club" led by the BPF would be dissolved.[2] In the end, this led to alternative candidates being put forth for the chairmanship of the BPF, including Vincuk Viačorka, the deputy head of the BPF. Viačorka and Pazniak both were unable to secure the majority of votes for the chairmanship.[2] Pazniak's supporters gathered at a congress and elected him as the chairman, thus splitting the party.[2] The supporters under Pazniak formed the right-wing Conservative Christian Party – BPF (KChP–BNF) party, while the ones under Viačorka simply formed the BPF.[2] However, Pazniak was isolated in dialogue because most members of the BPF migrated to the party under Viačorka, including prominent BPF politicians like Lyavon Barshchewski, although he retained a small group of loyal supporters to his cause.[2] Pazniak soon commented on the split in November from Warsaw, saying that after the hunger strike in 1995 during the referendum, a split started to emerge, which failed to divide the BPF but did divide the Hramada and left the party paralyzed after 1997.[40] He argued that the split was inevitable under a dictatorship due to reliance on foreign grants and limited national support from the bourgeois.[40] He favored ideological purity and independence, according to him, while Viačorka wanted coalition-building.[40] The KChP–BNF soon after disassociated itself from the rest of the opposition parties, accusing them of being puppets for Russia to incorporate Belarus into Russia under the disguise of advocating for democracy.[41] Present dayFollowing emigration, Zianon Pazniak is still active in leading the CCP-BPF (Christian Conservative Party of the BPF). His endeavour to participate in the presidential elections of 2006 was set back when he refused to forward the requisite number of signatures gathered for his candidacy. Pazniak and the Conservative Christian Party – BPF refused to join elections in the oppositional coalition led by Aliaksandar Milinkevich in 2006 election. He is a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.[42] In 2018, Pazniak received the Belarusian Democratic Republic 100th Jubilee Medal from the Rada of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Exile. In the summer of 2020, Pazniak founded the association "Free Belarus", which, according to its own statements, "advocates the protection, development and representation of the Belarusian nation, the Republic of Belarus and Belarusians around the world".[43] During the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 Pazniak called to support the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment.[44] In January 2023, during the Battle of Bakhmut, he visited the Belarusian fighters of the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment on the front line.[45] FamilyHis wife is Halina Pazniak (Vaščanka). She was a deputy of the Minsk City Council of Deputies. They have been married since 1995. She lives in Warsaw.[46] His step daughter is Nadzieja.[47][48] See alsoNotes
References
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